Sunday 1 May 2011

Day of the Moon (BSDA #20)

Good evening, planet Earth! (Or Europe/Africa at any rate. Other time zones, good day, or something.) It's Saturday - that means DOCTOR WHO. Review starts in five seconds. Five, four, three, two, one -

So it's episode two already. And there's only seven in this half of the series. Schade, as the Germans say. Better make it good, Steven Moffat, I thought to myself at five to six this evening.

HE DID. Whoa. In order to prevent myself from just blathering (and probably slathering) all over the screen for the next ten minutes, I am going to write this review in BULLET POINTS.

Plot - Genius. I'm a massive fan of the late 1960s and of space travel. I thought the way of getting rid of the Silents was absolutely wonderful. The power of people watching something together has always fascinated me, and it was interesting to see Who sci-fi that concept up. And with the old Moffatian trick of there being something we don't know about right behind us all the time, it manages to be awesome.



  • Style. Crazy, but in a good way. I felt the episode was a massive mishmash of styles, from creepy haunted house, to action thriller, to political comedy (some of the Nixon lines were utter brilliance), to love triangle story, and that was occasionally jarring. It seems to be a theme of late to switch from style to style to keep the audience on their toes. Mostly I like it. But it can be overdone.
  • Timey-wimey weirdness. I love timey-wimey messing around. This episode took that to the MAXIMUM, man. I don't think any scene followed on from the previous chronologically and with the obvious sense of time passing with the Amy in haunted house scene, the whole thing felt very disturbingly uncontrollable. I like. 
  • Amy, Rory, River, the Doc - LOVE? This, I have mixed feelings about. I feel the whole is-Amy-attracted-to-the-Doctor angle to be a bit irritating. I really identify with Rory and so it sort of annoys me a bit to see the narrative try to draw you towards the Doctor-love idea. Secondly, the River/Doctor story I find really powerful. It's genuinely moving. I just hope it doesn't turn into slushy romance, like RTD made the Tenth Doc and Rose storyline. As a traditionalist, I don't really like the idea of a romantic Doctor at all. He is an eccentric old alien. But maybe Moffat can make it work. We'll see.
  • Why the Silence are a genius narrative device. Because you can mess about with time, implant bits of the narrative elsewhere and create a constant sense of confusion in your viewers. Also it occurred to me that you'd be so screwed if you were in a room with Silents and Weeping Angels at the same time.
  • Time Lord Girl? Crazy. Speculation welcome.
  • Lady in the door? Also crazy. Apparently she's in at least two more episodes. Weirdness. Are we dealing with more parallel universe oddness? I hope so.
Verdict: 9/10

Right. Bye. Semi-coherent blogpost is semi-coherent. 

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