DOCTOR WHO - "The Impossible Astronaut" THROWBACK Review

 

This first story of Series 6 opens exactly as it should. With a dedication to the late Elisabeth Sladen (although I think a dedication to Nicholas Courtney should have been there as well), who passed away so very unexpectedly this past week. I will go into greater length and detail on this sad event on my blog a bit later. After all, this is a review, and that adventure beckons.

With Matt Smith’s debut season now over and done, Steven Moffat now has the opportunity to truly build on the foundation of the metaphorical house that is now well and truly set down. And its already apparent that he’s going to be doing some very bold, very striking design work this season. So with that said, let us proceed.



The Story…

Relaxing at home, Amy Pond is reading aloud from a history book to Rory, finding mentions of the Doctor, feeling he’s being deliberately ridiculous in an attempt to get their attention. Soon they get a TARDIS-blue card in the mail, giving a date, a time, and a set of coordinates. Meanwhile, at some unknown point in the future, Dr. River Song gets the same letter in her cell, and makes plans to escape. Following the instructions, the trio meet with the Doctor in Utah’s Monument Valley, where he happily greets them before they move to a Diner where he tells them that its time to stop his running. He says he will need them all, for a picnic, somewhere different and new: Space, 1969.

From there they share their picnic at a nearby spot beside a lake, the Doctor casually (or not) mentions being 1103 years of age, and Amy mentions that he was 908 the last time they saw him. Amy looks up and sees a mysterious figure over the rise, but suddenly forgets the sight once she looks away. As the Doctor waxes philosophical about the Moon and 1969, a man in a truck pulls up over the rise. Doctor stands and they wave to one another, just as River exclaims “oh my God!” and they spot the improbable form of an Apollo-era Astronaut standing in the lake. Telling them all to stay back, and not interfere, the Doctor walks to greet the visitor, who is silent as he says “Its okay. I know its you.” As his friends watch on in horror, the Astronaut raises an arm and a loud crack echoes through the air as it twice blasts the Doctor with bolts of green energy. As River and Rory hold Amy back, the Doctor starts to regenerate, muttering “I’m sorry” as the Astronaut fires a final time, halting the regeneration just as it had begun as the Doctor falls. The Astronaut turns and walks into the water. River finds the Doctor has no life signs, and fires her revolver at the Astronaut to no effect. A weeping Amy cannot believe the Doctor is dead, but River says that he was killed in mid-regeneration, and is truly gone.

The old man joins them, saying the fallen man is certainly the Doctor, and he’s certainly dead. He sets down a can of gasoline that he was told would be needed, with River explaining that other races would tear the planet apart to get the body of a Time-Lord. Rory spots a canoe, which they use to burn the Doctor in a Viking-style funeral. Watching, the old man introduces himself as Canton Everett Delaware III, showing them a letter identical to theirs, before he says farewell and leaves. River realizes that the envelopes were numbered. Canton’s was number 4, Amy and Rory’s was 3, and hers was number 2. Back at the diner, she explains that there must be an envelope numbered 1, and wonders who had received it. Rory finds the first envelope sitting on a table, and River says that the Doctor knew his death was coming, and they realize that he would send them out only to those he trusted. River asks who the Doctor trusted the most, and the question is answered as they see the Doctor himself stride in through the rear exit.

He’s pleased to see them all, but River is upset, thinking the Doctor has coldly manipulated them. He greets them all warmly, but an angry River slaps him for ‘something he hasn’t done yet’. The Doctor mentions that he was invited too, and when asked his age he declares he is 909. The Doctor asks why there are there, and River mentions they were recruited, and it has something to do with 1969 and a man named Canton Everett Delaware III. Back in the TARDIS, the seemingly-jovial Doctor rambles on about their destination, but Amy is disturbed and moves under the control platform floor. River joins her, and the Doctor asks Rory if everyone is cross with him. Rory says he’ll find out and joins River and Amy, leaving the Doctor to wonder what’s going on.

Below, River explains that this Doctor is 200 years younger than the one that died. Amy wants to warn him, but River tells her they cannot take the risk. She also says she doesn’t fear the Doctor’s death, nor her’s, for there’s a “worse day” coming for her. Rejoining the Doctor above, he tells them how the TARDIS cannot resist possible temporal tipping points, and right now she’s pointing towards Washington D.C on April 8th 1969, but says that he’s taking them all home. Irritated, the Doctor goes on to say he knows they are hiding something from him and they best not be attempting to play games with him because they cannot. River says he’ll have to trust them, but he illustrates exactly why he can’t trust a woman that won’t tell him who she is or whom she killed. Amy then asks for his trust, and when he tells her to swear to her honesty on something important, she says “Fish Fingers, and Custard”, and he is convinced.

They find that Mr. Delaware was a dismissed FBI agent, later summoned by President Richard M. Nixon, who needs someone on the outside to assist him. It seems that every night for the past 2 weeks, no matter where he is, he receives a mysterious call. The Doctor decides to place the TARDIS in a silent, invisible mode, and tells the others to stay behind and finds himself in the Oval Office. He overhears a recording of one of the calls, from a child called Jefferson Adams Hamilton, who who fears a ‘spaceman’. Nixon turns away from the window and spots him. The Doctor greets them but is restrained by the Secret Service. The Doctor calls out to River to make the TARDIS visible, the shock of which allows the Doctor to slip free. From the President’s desk he goes on to say he’s their new agent from Scotland Yard, along with his top operatives. He asks for five minutes to explain everything, and Canton is convinced that he’s worth that time. The Doctor looks over some requested maps, he goes on to explain that the child, a girl, is located somewhere near Cape Kennedy because its where the “Spacemen live”. Hearing this, Amy asks River if it could be the same Spaceman they saw at the lake, and River suggests it probably is.

Amy then spots a tall, alien-creature in the hallway, and recalls that its the same being she saw near the lake, the being she had forgotten. When Rory asks after her and the being is out of sight, she forgets once more. As a wave of nausea hits her, an agent guides her to a nearby restroom and inside she encounters the being again, and recalls both sightings. A woman steps out of one of the stalls and is startled but displays the same issues with recall once she has turned away from the creature. The being raises its hand and the lights flicker, and casually destroys the woman. Amy protests but takes a picture of the creature with her phone, realizing that once out of eye-shot, the creature is instantly forgotten. It comments that the woman’s name was Joy, and that her name is Amelia, and that she must tell the Doctor what he must know and also never know. Amy rushes out and again forgets the alien, returning to the Oval office as the phone rings and the Doctor points out the only place the child could be. The President answers the phone and records the call, and the child says that the spaceman is there to eat her. The Doctor bustles his friends into the TARDIS with Mr. Delaware following, and an amazed President Nixon looks on as the TARDIS vanishes, telling the child that he’s sending his best people.

Within the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that their destination is the intersection of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams, names that correspond with three of the Founding Fathers, and that the child was indicating where she was, not whom. Landing at the intersection, a few miles from Cape Kennedy, the Doctor bustles them out into the warehouse there. Mr. Delaware is amazed that they had moved, and Rory indicates it travels in space and time. The Doctor and River muse that the whole thing is likely a trap, and they’ll find out the why when they see who tries to kill them. Nearby, a space-suited figure watches closely. They find a table covered in alien probes, surrounded by section of contemporary space-gear. Amy and River talk, and are thinking the same thing: can they find the spaceman and stop it before it kills the Doctor in 2011? Unfortunately, they risk a major paradox if they do so, River finds a hatch in the floor, and within she discovers several of the mysterious aliens, frightened, she retreats and forgets they were there. She says the tunnels are clear and wants a longer look, and the Doctor sends Rory down with her. He finds River suffering from nausea, but she recovers and moves on, and they find a locked hatch in the wall. As she works to open it, Rory asks about the “worse day coming” that she mentioned. She explains that when she met the Doctor many years ago, he already knew everything about her, and it made a huge impression upon her. But each time they meet, she learns more of him, and he seems to know less of her. They are traveling in opposite directions in time, and she knows a day will come when she sees him and he will not know her at all. She succeeds in opening the hatch, and admits that event will probably kill her.

Inside the hatch, they find a mysterious, TARDIS-like control-room, and their approach prompts an alarm. Rory checks to see if anyone is coming, and he spots several of the aliens. When he turns to tell River, the memory is gone and he says there is nothing out there. River punches some figures into her scanner and finds that the tunnels are everywhere, running beneath the surface of the whole planet, and are centuries old. A flash of light prompts her to turn and she cries out, alarmed for Rory. Above, Amy and Mr. Delaware converse a little, but a child’s cry for help grabs their attention away. Canton draws his revolver, and calls for the Doctor. But Amy is stricken with a new wave of nausea and tells him he needs to know something important. He pulls Amy along with him and finds Delaware lying unconscious. Amy then reveals that she is pregnant. Just then, footfalls alert them to the Astronaut’s approach. It raises an arm, and Amy moves to grab Delaware’s fallen revolver as the spaceman raises its visor to reveal the child crying for help within. The child cries out once more, and Amy whirls round, shouting for the Doctor to get down as she fires once, with the Doctor screaming “No!”. She then sees the face of the child inside the suit, but it is too late…

The Critique…

I was really, really impressed by the overall strength and tone of this season-opener, and it ranks as possibly one of the best season-opening episodes I have seen, of any show. It essentially breaks convention and starts with a cliffhanger, which is very rare. To start off your season by killing the title character, forcing the supporting cast to step to the fore and try to figure out how to avert it? That’s just great stuff in my opinion, because it really hooks the viewer with the idea that nobody in the cast is safe, and all bets are off. This was something that Joss Whedon did to great effect a number of times, arguably with the greatest deal of effectiveness in the film SERENITY, which was the cinematic continuation of his aborted TV series, FIREFLY. In my case, following Wash’s death and the injury of virtually the entire crew, there were a few tense minutes where I was convinced that all of the characters were about to die. While I don’t feel quite that strongly, I must admit that seeing the Doctor truly die, and seeing how devastated his companions were, I was left a bit nervous, and I do wonder what Moffat has up his sleeve.

The events also serve to cement the importance of this particular incarnation’s companions: Amy, Rory, and Dr. River Song. They aren’t going to be standing around “looking impressed”, they’re going to be intrinsic to the proceedings, and given the events that are unfolding, that’s a good thing. They’ve shown themselves to be brave, smart, and capable in the past, but they will have to be in top form this time around, because the stakes are simply too high. Plus, we have the added urgency and danger due the fact that Amy is pregnant. Hoo boy. The ride is going to be a bumpy one for sure folks.

This time around Moffat has also given us a rather unsettling menace in the form of The Silence, and I hesitate to call them new, because although we’ve never seen them before this particular series, they were very strongly alluded to last year. And it also seems as if they’ve been up to something for centuries now, and that they are deeply entrenched within the Earth and its history, which makes defeating them a truly iffy proposition (Shades of John Carpenter’s alien opus, the criminally underrated THEY LIVE). Their image is somewhat striking as well, combining the look of pop-culture Alien “Greys” with the equally mysterious Men In Black from UFO lore, AND tying them in with the TARDIS-like machine discovered by the Doctor in last season’s “The Lodger”. Also, they evoked memories of The Gentlemen from TV’s BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER in the superb, award-winning 4th-season episode, “Hush”, who were probably the most unsettling beings Buffy and the Scoobies ever faced.

Another thing I enjoyed (and this is a small thing, really) was that it was made pretty clear that the Doctor knows more about how to operate his TARDIS than he often lets on (which should be obvious by now, really). This time around we had River going behind him to make sure that his intent to activate the vessel’s “silent-running and cloaked” mode was going to go off properly, which started to annoy me a bit like the “parking brake” bit did last series. However, we got a payoff that showed that the Doctor was testing her to see just how much she did know about how to operate the TARDIS, so that he could count on her to do exactly what he needed her to do, much to her somewhat insincere annoyance. That was a great moment in my opinion.

And while I’m on the subject, we got to see another hint of the Doctor’s darker side. Not the frustration and grief-driven “Time-Lord Victorious” dark-side from “The Waters Of Mars”, but the dark undercurrents of deep-but-subtle menace under the surface. Undercurrents which remind us that while the Doctor is charming, silly, affable, and brilliant, and has a genuine affection for his friends and for humans in general, he is also a Time-Lord, and that his occasional bumbling isn’t just an act that serves to lull his enemies into a false sense of superiority, but an act for the benefit of his friends and allies as well (something I touched on in the above paragraph). This is something that Donna Noble realized about him upon their very first meeting: the Doctor is a very, VERY dangerous being, not just because peril follows him almost everywhere he goes, but because he is more than capable of loosing the often pragmatic and sometimes deeply ruthless nature of his race in an instant, an icy rage that can bring entire civilizations, indeed, entire worlds crashing down should he deem it necessary. So when the Doctor quietly states that his friends best not think themselves capable of playing games with him, you realize he’s dead-serious and absolutely correct, because he’ll trust them only so far. The net result of these scenes also serve to remind the viewer as well, of the things of which he is capable. As fans, we love the Doctor and his exploits, and his sense of justice, but sometimes need reminding that at times his thought-processes and actions aren’t very human at all, and that nobody can really guess at what’s going on behind his eyes. We saw hints of this during David Tennant’s tenure, and it was readily apparent during Sylvester McCoy’s final two seasons, but we didn’t see much of this from Smith’s Eleventh Doctor last series. We’re certainly seeing it here, more clearly and effectively than last season, and its good television.

I’m also going to take a moment to comment on the excellent dialogue. Granted, Moffat’s dialogue is usually excellent, but I found it to be really cracking-good this time around. The scenes within the TARDIS where the Doctor confronts his friends about their secrecy, and the scene where the Doctor shows up in the Oval Office of the White House and eventually takes the lead stand out as superb for varied reasons. The part where the Doctor introduced his “Top Operatives” to the President had me in stitches, and I wasn’t the only one. That was a golden, laugh-out-loud delight. Mrs. Robinson indeed!

Moffat has also left us with not only a riveting hook to start things off, but some fine mysteries as well. Who are The Silence, and what is the meaning of the phrase “Silence will fall?” Does that mean the beings shall fall upon our heroes like a plague, or is their defeat assured? And if so, at what cost? Who is the child within the space-suit in 1969, and how is she connected to The Silence? Is she truly the same being as the one we saw in 2011, or will that be something else? Why is the Doctor resigned to his fate, and were things truly as we witnessed them? After all, as River Song told us during “The Big Bang”, “the Doctor lies”. And speaking of, just what is the deal with River Song? Fans have been wondering exactly that for several years now, and Moffat has stated that we’ll finally find out the key facts behind River Song this year, but I’m willing to bet that the answers will generate yet more questions, which they very probably should anyway.

Regardless, this episode has assured that I and so many other fans will be there next week, “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel”, so to speak.

The Performances…

Where do I start? How about with the title character?

Matt Smith continues to impress as the Doctor, and has grown completely comfortable within the role within a very short time. Doubtless, part of it is the fact that he’s been given good material to work with most of the time, plus he’s just a natural. As has been said by friends of mine, he’s the first actor since Tom Baker to completely capture the alien nature of the Doctor, and like Baker before him, it seems as if Matt Smith was born to play this part. The quirks, the inflections, the burden, the wisdom and quiet menace, Matt is able to run the gamut and do so very well. I was particularly impressed with the scene in the TARDIS where he became rather frightening, and thought his portrayal was phenomenal. In fact, its getting to the point where my being impressed with his performance is just a given, which is a good thing. The man simply almost never lets me down with his portrayal.

Likewise, Karen Gillian was also superb as Amy, and I’m liking her performance more this time around. It seems a bit more easy and natural, and I think she too has grown very comfortable in the part. Her shock, horror, and grief following the Doctor’s death was powerful and came across as very real (and from what Kingston said on Confidential, Karen was distraught and acting her heart out that day). For my money, that’s one of the best scenes she’s ever done as Amy, and she blasted it right out of the proverbial park.

Alongside Karen, I feel that Arthur Darvill has grown into best male companion of the renewed series, and one of the best male companions of the series as a whole. He’s likable and brave, and he displays the reality of bravery: that it doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid, it means that you act in spite of your fear. Darvill has organically turned Rory into a hero, one who doesn’t need to be made of plastic or pack a built-in “handgun” to be heroic (although Auton-Rory was awesome). He’s great, and I’m so glad he’s part of the regular cast.

Alex Kingston is as solid as she has always been as River Song, and strikes the right combination of determination, intelligence, secrecy, resourcefulness, annoyance, devotion, and vulnerability, and we keep getting closer and closer to finding out the truths behind her character and what drives her. I have every confidence that Kingston is up to the coming revelations.

I also have to commend the casting of the father/son duo of W. Morgan Sheppard and Mark Andreas Sheppard as Agent Canton Everett Delaware III. Both actors have a very long list of genre credits, with W. Morgan having appeared in television on shows that include NCIS, STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION, SEAQUEST DSV, and MacGUYVER, and films including STAR TREK VI-THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, and TRANSFORMERS. Mark has appeared on shows like THE X-FILES, DOLLHOUSE, FIREFLY, CSI, CHUCK, STAR TREK-VOYAGER, MEDIUM, and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, and on films like IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, and UNSTOPPABLE. They also are in the very short list of performers to appear on both Doctor Who and in the world of Star Trek. Both of them were very good in their roles, and a great addition to the story at hand.

Also, American actor Stuart Milligan played President Richard M. Nixon. He didn’t blow me away, mind you, but he did a good job portraying one of the most controversial Presidents in American History. It helped that he was surrounded by that awesome Oval Office set, which I mention below.

Getting Technical…

We got the expected compliment of great monster design in the form of The Silent, and strong special effects, with the added bonus of some superb set-design in the form of the Oval Office, which was built at the Upper Boat studios in Wales, and looked very authentic, and the cast and crew raved about how well-done it was. Justifiably so I think, because it looked great from where I’m sitting.

Added to that was the gorgeous location-filming in Utah’s Monument Valley and on the shores of Lake Powell. These are images that evoke memories in many of Americans, because the landscape is so distinctive and iconic, thanks to years and years of use in films and television shows. While we only got to see a little of the location shooting this time around, the next episode seems to showcase much more. It certainly makes the show look very different, and its a welcome change of scenery.

The Verdict…

EXCELLENT

Wow. What an absolutely smashing way to start off the new series of Doctor Who. Moffat and the production team made good use of the American west backdrop, hooked us with an emotionally devastating and powerful end to the first act, gave us some creeptastic baddies, a cool new supporting character in the form of Mr. Delaware III, and a great story overall. I honestly can’t find any real fault with the opener at all. It was all aces in my book, and I really cannot wait to see what happens next. Top marks all around!