But, rather worryingly, The Impossible Astronaut opened with a couple of random, pointless vignettes played totally for laughs (and to make interesting clips with the trailers).
The real story kicked off post-credits with The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River rendezvousing in the Utah desert and faced with a mystery that involved "space 1969" and a gentleman by the name of Canton Everett Delaware (who turns out to be an ex-FBI man called in by President Nixon for a special assignment).
And we mustn't overlook the stunning visual of the Astronaut standing in the lake...
The TARDIS materialises in the Oval Office as President Nixon (Stuart Milligan) is playing, to Canton (Mark Sheppard), a recording of strange phone calls he's been receiving from a small child - and this is where the fun really started.
Matt Smith, as The Doctor, got all the best lines this week and his flirting with River Song (Alex Kingston) was spot-on - the sort of thing adults would get, but kids would just think was banter - and Mark Sheppard, of course, was fantastic, if, ultimately, tad a redundant so far, except as the facilitator to get President Nixon on The Doctor's side.
The main thing that annoyed me about the episode though was, yes, there was a death of a main character, but Steven Moffat totally lied about it "not being a trick". Of course, it was. This is just the sort of BS that Russell T Davies would pull in the media to try and hook a few extra viewers. But Doctor Who is a strong enough programme that it doesn't need this sort of nonsense to boost ratings.
To be honest, I'd rather the showrunners said nothing about the forthcoming episodes than flat-out lied to their audience.
If we hadn't known it was coming, it might - possibly - have had some sort of emotional resonance, but as it was, as soon as the person was killed, and Amy was sobbing away, I felt no empathy whatsoever. I just knew there was an obvious loophole and it was exactly the one Moffat chose, much like the obviousness of Amy's "big secret" revealed towards the end of the episode.
It's a shame that Moffat feels the need to play up these obvious gimmicks as "something new and clever", because the rest of the latter part of the story - especially once the excellent Silent (aliens you forget as soon as you turn away from them) came into play - was superb, old school, exciting Doctor Who.
The story was full of joyous time travel and scary aliens, which are the two things we know that Moffat does well. He is one of the few Doctor Who writers who has recognised that time travel can be used for more than just getting The Doctor and his companions into (and out of) a story and I love that about his episodes.
There's also plenty of mysteries to be solved; the identity of the "astronaut", what The Silent want, will it be possible to save their "dead" colleague etc?. Certainly enough to hook even a casual viewer, let alone a die-hard Whovian like most readers of HeroPress.
Season openers since The Doctor returned in 2005 have generally been pretty mediocre, as they've always had to be newbie friendly, yet The Impossible Astronaut was certainly one of the better ones. It also had the benefit of being the first part of an extended story and the trailer for part two certainly kicks things up a gear, rather than just being more of the same.
Even if it does immediately spoil the cliffhanger ending of The Impossible Astronaut!
Next Week:
Agree with you about the prologue scenes; they were silly, but necessary in a way to get the potentially massive new US audience up to speed with the way that the Doctor uses and generally messes with time travel. The episode may well have been better without them, but at least it gets it all out of the way as soon as possible, and better to do it right at the start than not at all.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for the death, I'm looking forward to seeing how it all resolves, and hope it takes a while before it does. It would be disappointing if it was all magically "fixed" in the next episode. We'll see.
Over all though, a great start to the season. Roll on next week!
I agree (good point about the opening scenes as well). I've only read one other review since I wrote mine and it was a surprisingly negative one from a Doctor Who fan site, rather than a random blogger such as I.
ReplyDeleteI'd predicted the death, and the way around it, about two or three hours before the programme aired. I don't think it's fair to call it a lie, as a bit of time travel in Doctor Who isn't a "trick". If he'd been a clone, or an alternate Doctor or something like that, that would be a trick, but doubling back on your own timeline is bread and butter for this series -- as you yourself note -- so I don't consider it cheating.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's going to be resolved in the next part, either; I have a feeling that the Silence, and the Doctor's death, will be ongoing plots throughout both of this year's series.
By the way, did you notice the familiar alien control room? We've seen it before.
I still think you're the only one who thought the last series was disappointing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you really thought the "death" wouldn't be a cheat? From clips and other info, we already knew Amy, Rory and River would be around by at least the 7th episode. So somehow there'd have to be a cheat (auton, clone, past version,whatever). A future version of the Doctor dying fits in with Moffats time-travel tricks. Although I thought River had seen various regenerations of the Doctor, not just the Matt Smith version.
Anyway, i enjoyed the episode. Yes the pre-clip scenes were somewhat superfluous but fun. And the Moff really loves his mysteries, doesn't he? He plays the long cerebral game (which makes me wonder what kids think of this episode. After the Doctor was shot, and then came back, were they confused?).
Part of me does sort of miss RTDs bright'n'shiny action.
If you look around the Interwebz I think you'll find a lot of people were disappointed with last season to varying degrees - some much more vitriolic than I!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I spotted the "black TARDIS control room" from The Lodger, but its appearance was comparatively brief, so I wanted to wait and see if this would play out in part two of the story.
I still stick firmly to my contention that The Doctor's "death" is a lie/cheat. Not in the context of the story itself - that's clever time-whimey stuff that we love Doctor Who for.
But Moffat's suggestion that this is the character's FINAL death. Even if we get three or four more years of Matt Smith (which I doubt) are the BBC really going to retire their flagship programme? No, of course not, so eventually another actor will come in to play The Doctor's next regeneration.
As I said above, I'd rather Moffat had said nothing about this than try to hook us in with sensationalist hyperbole. I was hoping we'd left that back in the RTD era.
I'm also in the camp that believes this sub-plot is part of the major through-story of the season and certainly won't be resolved in the next episode.
I'm just hoping though that The Doctor's "death" doesn't turn out to be the end of season cliff-hanger into season 33.
Oh God, just had a hideous thought: what if Amy's baby is - somehow - the next regeneration of The Doctor???
ReplyDeleteWhat about the similar title to The Impossible Planet and tenuous connections? It only came to mind when I noticed markings on Amy and Rory in the trailer for next week; yes, the markings are different to Toby's in Impossible Planet, and I'm probably reading too much into it, but there's also the new creatures which could potentially be pawns much like the Ood were...
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's a connection - from brief clips I've seen the marks are (supposedly) to indicate the number of times they have seen The Silent (to remind them... although why they couldn't just write 'The Silent' on their arms, I guess we'll have to wait a week to find out).
ReplyDeleteI also don't think The Moff would draw on an RTD era story - but I could be wrong ;)
I've been struggling with my own review of The Impossible Astronaut because it really is all set-up. I'd wind up posting questions, but couldn't form proper opinions about anything until at least Part 2 airs.
ReplyDeleteI joked afterwards that it didn't have other openers' silly monster (not that The 11th Hour had one). WHERE IS MY SILLY MONSTER? Auton Mickey, Cat Nuns, Judoon on the Moon, Adipose...
And my "Who Is River Song?" post, written about Silence in the Library all those years ago, has gone back to getting hundreds of hits a day, after I thought it had jumped the shark when someone predicted River would be NYSSA. I kid you not.
So do I write something for Thursday (next available slot) or do I wait for Part 2? We'll see. In the meantime, you've given me things to think about.
My standard "policy" - with nuWho - has always been to review every episode, but, as you quite rightly point out, it's becoming increasingly hard when the first part is always set-up!
ReplyDeleteSurely The Silent in their Men-in-Black suits count as silly aliens?
I'm seriously beginning to think there's a connection between Amy Pond and River Song (red-heads with water-themed names!)...
I hear there's a new companion called Fjord Prefect in the offing.
ReplyDeleteI think you've been out in the sun too long... ;D
ReplyDelete