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[Mothra]

fffffff cliffhangerss

Loving this so far. Hoping Mark Sheppard gets to do more than be confused in the second part, because I loved that guy in pretty much every property I've seen him in (BSG/Dollhouse/Firefly).

Apparently that was the Sheppard's dad playing the older version of himself at the beginning.

Also: These aliens rule

[Fortinbras]

River Song is [spoiler]Amy Pond's daughter[/spoiler] or the idea of [spoiler]Amy Pond having a kid[/spoiler] is being juxtaposed with an episode full of who-is-River-Songiness intentionally to provide theorist fodder.

Very good episode, the very last few seconds made everyone I was watching with laugh.  Too much time to parse each shot, should not have been in slow motion.

[Bal]

Fuck you, Moffat. How the hell are the duke boys going to get out of this one?

[Thad]

River Song is [spoiler]Amy Pond's daughter[/spoiler] or the idea of [spoiler]Amy Pond having a kid[/spoiler] is being juxtaposed with an episode full of who-is-River-Songiness intentionally to provide theorist fodder.

Well, yes, it's possible that [spoiler]River and the little girl are the same person[/spoiler].  Seems a little cute, though.

[Thad]

[spoiler]Given this, I initially assumed it was her in the spacesuit.  Given that she seemed pretty surprised by the whole thing, I assumed that the "her" in the spacesuit was from her future.  And given that we'd already seen her in prison earlier in the episode, this introduced the possibility that she was actually convicted and sentenced BEFORE committing the murder -- which sounds like a Moffat plot, doesn't it?[/spoiler]

Another thought: It's entirely possible that [spoiler]the River we see at the beginning of the episode is a "later" River than the one we see throughout the rest of the episode[/spoiler].  But I don't think that would be nearly as cool.

[Thad]

Well!

I particularly liked the blackouts; they're probably the best timey-wimey trick Moff's pulled off since Blink.

There's also something charming about leaving a million dangling threads and saying "Fuck it, let's go see pirates; we'll get back to this stuff in a few weeks."

Ending: well THAT was unexpected.  The "Who is the little girl?" plot thickens.  [spoiler]River and the Doctor's daughter?  Amy and Rory's, somehow affected by the TARDIS and given a time head?  It's probably safe to say the Doctor isn't the father of Amy's child.  Could still be River herself, though hasn't it been clearly established that she's human?[/spoiler]

Another question that occurred to me after last week's episode: where's the future Doctor's TARDIS?  Destroying his body so nobody can get their hands on it is fine and dandy, but leaving the TARDIS lying around doesn't seem like a good way of keeping Time Lord secrets safe.

Since he pulled up in a car, of course, it could be anywhere.  Somebody else could already have it, he could have left it in 1960's England where it still looked innocuous, or he could have fixed the chameleon circuit and turned it into any object at all.  Given the 200-year gap, it may not even be on Earth; he could have parked it somewhere else entirely and hitched a lift.

And of course it bears noting that the 200-year gap explains River's references back in Silence/Forest to a much older Doctor.

EDIT: Oh, and of course, how slow of me -- the very first time we ever SAW River, she was wearing a spacesuit.  Not 1960's vintage, of course, but still, spacesuit.  With her face covered and everything.

EDIT 2: Also, I was remiss in not mentioning the crazy guy's performance.  It really was the best thing about the episode.

Also also: I doubt we'll see Nixon again, but I'm sure we're meant to believe there aren't actually 18 minutes missing from his tapes, just 18 minutes that nobody can remember immediately after listening to them.

[Bal]

I like Moffat's plan of kicking off the season with a two-parter worthy of a finale, and then having some pirates or whatever. This is going to be a six episode series followed by another six after summer, right? So we might get two adventures, and then another double feature finale, or, more horrifyingly, 3 adventures and then part 1 of a cliffhanger to be picked up after the break. I think I'll go into fucking stasis if the latter is the case.

[Thad]

According to tvdb, it is in fact going to drop us straight into the middle of a cliffhanger, with a "Part 1" as the last episode before the break.

Next week we've got The Curse of the Black Spot, followed by Gaiman's The Doctor's Wife.  Then we've got a two-parter, The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, and then A Good Man Goes to War, the first of a two-parter.  And then the break.

Part 2's title is unrevealed as yet; the other titles we've got so far are What are Little Boys Made Of? and The God Complex.

Anyhow, the "A Good Man Goes to War" recalls the Doctor's reference to starting a revolution, as well as River's statement that she killed the best man she ever knew.

[Misha]

I think my favorite thing about this episode was [spoiler]that humanity is implied to have wiped out the entire silence WITH THEIR BARE HANDS if necessary. We're not a nice species.[/spoiler]

[Bal]

According to tvdb, it is in fact going to drop us straight into the middle of a cliffhanger, with a "Part 1" as the last episode before the break.

Next week we've got The Curse of the Black Spot, followed by Gaiman's The Doctor's Wife.  Then we've got a two-parter, The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, and then A Good Man Goes to War, the first of a two-parter.  And then the break.

Part 2's title is unrevealed as yet; the other titles we've got so far are What are Little Boys Made Of? and The God Complex.

Anyhow, the "A Good Man Goes to War" recalls the Doctor's reference to starting a revolution, as well as River's statement that she killed the best man she ever knew.

[Thad]

Hey, I didn't quite catch what River said after Amy asked what kind of doctor she was, but my girlfriend thought she said "Level Two."

So here's a new crackpot theory: what if she's the Doctor's successor?  What if, somewhere down the line, he decides to pass the torch?  That could explain why she knows his name -- because by the end, he's not the Doctor anymore, he's just a guy named Joe again.

[Bal]

She says "Archeologist" while shooting one of the Silence. I think it's an Indiana Jones joke. In addition to making sense.

[Royal☭]

What she says after that is "Love a tomb", which is what she might have heard as "Level 2"


Other things to note about the episode:

We still don't know what exactly caused the events of last season's finale. Who built the Pandorica? Who blew up the TARDIS? So there's still more to go on.

Pregnancy also played a really, really big role in this one. There was [spoiler]Amy's maybe-pregnancy, the orphanage, Nixon points out that one of the security heads is about to have a child, and the entire time-span of the episode was 9 months. Also was anyone else reminded of a womb and birth when they saw they were explaining the exosuit?[/spoiler] And I can't help but think the scene in the Orphanage was a ton of clues being dropped [spoiler]multiple memory wipes can affect the mind, the man losing over 2 years of his life, the repeated GET OUTS on the wall[/spoiler]

Obviously there's a lot left to answer, this being the beginning of the season, but it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

[Thad]

We still don't know what exactly caused the events of last season's finale. Who built the Pandorica? Who blew up the TARDIS? So there's still more to go on.

And who whispered "The Silents will fall"?

It was a female voice, wasn't it?  Could it be [spoiler]Eyepatch Lady[/spoiler]?

Pregnancy also played a really, really big role in this one. There was [spoiler]Amy's maybe-pregnancy, the orphanage, Nixon points out that one of the security heads is about to have a child, and the entire time-span of the episode was 9 months. Also was anyone else reminded of a womb and birth when they saw they were explaining the exosuit?[/spoiler]

A theory I've seen that makes sense: [spoiler]the Silents need the child to operate their TARDIS.  She's clearly got the regeneration thing going on; it's already been hinted that Amy's baby's been affected by gestating on the TARDIS.  Or the child could be the Doctor's and River's, but in that case why are we making such a fuss about Amy's baby?[/spoiler]

And I can't help but think the scene in the Orphanage was a ton of clues being dropped [spoiler]multiple memory wipes can affect the mind, the man losing over 2 years of his life, the repeated GET OUTS on the wall[/spoiler]

I read it more as [spoiler]his memory is constantly being wiped, so it's just as if those two years haven't happened because that's how much time he's spent looking at Silents.[/spoiler]

There's also [spoiler]the post-hypnotic suggestion thing.  We already saw a Silent tell Amy to tell the Doctor two things; so far she's only told him one.  We're meant to assume that the other thing is "You are going to get shot in the face by someone in that spacesuit 200 years in your future" but of course it could be something else.  And how long did they have her prisoner?  They could have stuck any number of nasty things in there.[/spoiler]

[Misha]

Bleh. This episode felt super derivative and fairly nonsensical at the same time. [spoiler]"Explosions" that are really teleports, a super powerful alien medical system that doesn't know how to deal with humans, where's Christopher eccleston when you need him? We didn't need another scene of the doctor staring at quantum baby either.[/spoiler]

[Fortinbras]

It did sort of feel like it should be an Eccleston episode toward the end.  Well put.

[spoiler]Friend points out: what the woman in the wall said sounded like labor coach talk.[/spoiler]

Broader, rambling speculation: I get the feeling the Moff likes weirdness too much to let the Doctor and River Song's relationship play out with its slated tragic linearity (or... bi-linearity or something, i don't know what to call it.)  Eventually a wrench is going to get thrown in, possibly related to the whole [spoiler]"you gonna get murdered by a spaceman"[/spoiler] thing, or the Doctor's going to get proactive as he starts to experience what characterized all River's early appearances, that feeling of "oh god, you're so young."  Latter would be interesting, as since late period Tennant/first season Smith the doctor's been giving less of a shit about messing with timelines he's already a part of and generally breaking the rules.

Anyway, Matt Smith is so good.  He's really grown into the roll.

[Thad]

[spoiler]Friend points out: what the woman in the wall said sounded like labor coach talk.[/spoiler]

And let's not forget the "there/not there" thing that's happened both times she's shown up.

Broader, rambling speculation: I get the feeling the Moff likes weirdness too much to let the Doctor and River Song's relationship play out with its slated tragic linearity (or... bi-linearity or something, i don't know what to call it.)

Well, the idea that they're going in straight lines in opposite directions is pretty new, isn't it?  I mean, she wouldn't NEED a "Have we done that yet?" checklist if it were a straight line.  And didn't the Doctor say something along the lines of "We keep meeting each other out of sequence" when she showed up in Time of Angels?  Which would imply she'd met #10 offscreen at least once.

Eventually a wrench is going to get thrown in, possibly related to the whole [spoiler]"you gonna get murdered by a spaceman"[/spoiler] thing, or the Doctor's going to get proactive as he starts to experience what characterized all River's early appearances, that feeling of "oh god, you're so young."  Latter would be interesting, as since late period Tennant/first season Smith the doctor's been giving less of a shit about messing with timelines he's already a part of and generally breaking the rules.

I think her tragic trajectory toward Silence in the Library is really key, though, and even if the Doctor breaks the rules I think that end has to remain intact.  He could hypothetically find a way to bring her back out of the computer there, but I don't see much reason to do that, either.

There's bound to be SOME fiddling with the timeline at some point here -- because they can't very well leave the Eleventh Doctor dead with no shot at regeneration -- but I don't see Forest of the Dead being superseded.

[Verde]

the "there/not there" thing

I get the feeling the "two cars parked in the same space" theme from this episode may end up being important further on in the series.

Anyway, I didn't hate this episode. It was entertaining enough, but just felt like fluff after the past two weeks. Actually ended up watching it twice because I was drunk enough the first time to completely miss [spoiler] the midwife eyepatch woman[/spoiler]. Yeah, really didn't need to watch it twice.

There were a couple of weird plot holes: [spoiler]why were the Doctor, Amy, and pirate put in a completely different position to the rest of the crew when they were transported to the sickbay? And what happened to the pirate who was barricaded in with Amy, Rory, and the little boy who looked like a girl? He turned up at the end, but there was no logical point when the AI doctor could've taken him. He just vanished.[/spoiler]

I'm sure at least the latter point of the above will be explained away in the finale, but that's not going to fix the fact that it just looks like sloppy writing the first time around.

And [spoiler]Rory not-quite-dying again? At this point it's become nothing more than a handy toilet break for me. Just kill the guy.[/spoiler]

[Mothra]

Yeah, Rory has stone-cold died like eight times already... they might want to hang back on that one a bit.

I rewatched Day of the Moon a second time with my roommates, and I still had a hard time enjoying it. There's a lot of great ideas going on, and I'm sure this will all come together by the end, but as it was, there was just far too much packed into far too little time.

They could have cut the whole recording hand bit out for how little it was used, maybe the "Doctor being freed from NASA" scene as well, couple of the River-being-smug sequences, and really, they should have concentrated on the astronaut far less and the Silents far more, or vice versa. Cramming both into one hour was meandering and exhausting.

That's essentially how these two felt: exhausting, rather than entertaining.

[Verde]

Yeah. I'd be very surprised if that's not the best episode of the whole season.