Review of Day of the Moon
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes. It also contains profanity. Proceed at your own risk.
This being the first story of the series, I wasn’t expecting resolution for many of the dangling plot threads in the second half of the two-parter. However, I don’t think I expected as many new ones to be woven in, either. And frankly, I’m not convinced that the threads that seemed to get tied up really are. Oh, what a tangled web Moff weaves…
Starting things off in style with a beautifully wrought mind-fuck allows the production team to squeeze in a few more shots of the good ol’ US of A (I have to say, it’s slightly amusing in Confidential to watch the Brits wax poetic about the American landscape; I suppose it’s a grass-is-always-greener situation, since I find the backdrops here beautiful but almost blasé in their familiarity, while I’d be walking around London and surrounds like a slack-jawed yokel, myself), and puts the viewer off-kilter for a beat.
But soon we’re back to the more familiar, with the Doctor having done something incredibly clever (watch him *snap* the TARDIS open), and River having trusted him with her life yet again. A little bit of exposition later, and it’s on to a truly hide-behind-the-sofa-worthy haunted house. I have to say this is one of the creepiest (darkest, if you will – that seems to be the adjective the production team is using) episodes I’ve ever seen, from any era.
True to Moffat form, though, it’s an emotional roller coaster. First we’re creeped out by bloody writing on mouldering walls, a cyborgish woman seen through a non-existent door panel, and an unexplained picture of Amy with a baby (presumably the little girl in the astronaut’s suit; is she Amy’s daughter? the Doctor’s? theirs?) and then we’re snickering at Nixon trying to get the Doctor out of the hot seat while River and Rory stand around in stylin’ ’60s garb in the background. (I wonder if they purposely added in a moment when Rory would salute so he could do it “wrong” – palm out like a Brit rather than palm down like an American – and how many British Who viewers would know that looks wrong to an American?) Up and down, up and down… There are some laughs for sure (the Doctor/River banter is priceless), but there are many more painful moments – especially regarding the Rory/Amy/Doctor not-quite triangle – than light ones.
Let’s just examine that triangle in a little more detail, shall we? The plot development of this Thread really starts after they find Amy’s still-transmitting implant. In defending the strength of their relationship to the Doctor, Rory’s clearly working to convince himself that she really loves him, not the Doctor. The Doctor’s trying to believe it, too, and the simple expression of pain and regret as he closes his eyes against her call for him is beautiful in its understatement.
Then she delivers her meant-to-be-overheard monologue about who she loves. It’s ambiguous, and that feeds into the plot nicely. On second viewing, though, I’m convinced she really did mean Rory all along, what with the “Stupid Face” references throughout. (While Amy’s doing all this ranting, she’s surrounded by Silence. I had to wonder if they had been using their suggestive powers to try to drive a wedge between her and Rory, or if it’s just a manifestation of her standard way of creating distance so she won’t get hurt…) Will that Stupid Face come back to us again and again, as it did at a critical moment during their escape this week?
It’s abundantly clear that the question of her pregnancy will be an ongoing Thread, too. Is she? Isn’t she? Why did she tell the Doctor? (What do the Silence get out of that – they told her to tell him!) I think it all ties in with both The Little Girl (TLG) and the Silence. Witness their comments to Amy: “We do you honor. You will bring the Silence. But your part will soon be over.” Ominous much?
So what are our clues? The Silence assuring Amy she plays a key role for them, but that it’s brief; the Silence wanting the Doctor to know about the Schrödinger’s Pregnancy; Amy as apparent mother in a baby picture in TLG’s room in 1969; the Silence caring very carefully for TLG; TLG’s obvious Timelord DNA… It’s all pretty suggestive of a bigger plot for the whole series.
As for the Silence, I’ll be extremely surprised if they’re really out of the picture. Aside from the whole bit where they were there on the beach and the fact that they know the Doctor on sight, I’ve got a bigger question. (No, not just “what do memory-stealing, post-hypnotic-suggestive, imperialist aliens get out of sending humanity to the moon?” And I’m not entirely convinced that the answer to that one is really only “to get the suit for TLG,” either.) Are we sure the Doctor’s “defeat” of the Silence is a good thing? After all, “Silence will fall” doesn’t sound encouraging, coming as it has like a warning both from Prisoner Zero and the Disembodied Voice in the TARDIS at the end of The Big Bang. Maybe causing the downfall of the Silence is what sets off this whole timey-wimey chain of events leading to the Doctor’s death.
And where does River fit into this whole mess? We’ve been promised that “everything changes” soon (~cough~mid-series cliffhanger~cough~), but there are still only snippets of detail otherwise. Evidence continues to stack up in favor of the “spousal hypothesis” (to wit, her reference to him as “my old fella” and the big ol’ smoochie as they part company), but that’s far too straightforward for Moffat. I still think that’s a minor (or at least “secondary,” if we’re being particular about semantics) aspect of their relationship. There’s something sinister lurking in the future of their relationship (as we are viewing it). Why else would she have said she was sorry before whispering his name to him when he first met her?
She tells him at one point, “Our lives are back to front. Your future’s my past. Your firsts are my lasts.” (I can’t help but think of Piers Anthony’s 1980s fantasy series The Incarnations of Immortality
So that leaves us with quite the pile of loose plot Threads. Weaving them into an attractive tapestry is a tall order, and the image that eventually emerges from the chaos is sure to be different from any we envision now. Whatever comes of it all, it’s sure to be a hell of a ride.