A Pregnant Silence

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, where River plays Chronos to our "normal" timestream.  I loved these in junior high - so sue me...)  Whether or not that chronology is strictly true is yet to be determined, but we have certainly seen the first/last kiss, and more awkwardness - increasingly on River's part, and less on the Doctor's - is sure to follow.  Her story is going to be one that's fun to watch again from her perspective, once we have it "all."

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.

Confession #3: I Might Like Matt Smith Better Than David Tennant

Blasphemy!  Heresy!  Buuuuuurn heeeeeer!

OK, that's probably overstating the reaction a bit, but I may well be ostracized at my own get-together after this one. The Ladies of WhoFest are firm Tennantites, so admitting my Smithian leanings is sure to engender some antagonism, or at the very least disdain.  I can't deny it any more, though.  I think Eleven has surpassed Ten for me in terms of watchability.

Don't get me wrong - Ten is my Doctor.  I fell in love with him (yeah, I mean it that way - how Mary Sue of me; and yes, I wept like a pregnant lady during The End of Time...), and through him learned to love all the Doctors, each in their own way.  But there's something a bit off-putting about The Lonely God after a while.  While I loved the Saddest Doctor when he was in a manic phase - oh, that smile... - I got tired of him getting screwed (metaphorically, and - depending on how you interpret a few things - literally) all the time.  The guy couldn't catch a break.  Given how RTD chose to write his story arc, I have to say it was probably time for Ten to regenerate; I mean, how much lower could he go?

Perhaps it will come as no surprise, then, when I say that what I've come to love most about Eleven is the return of his joie de vivre.  Sure, the pain is still lurking there in his eyes when someone forcibly reminds him of it, but for the most part, he can put it out of his mind the way anyone who's lost a loved one learns to do (or, as Two put it in Tomb of the Cybermen, "I have to really want to - to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they... they sleep in my mind, and I forget.").  But overall, Eleven gives off a kid-in-a-candy-store vibe, like he hardly knows where to begin because it's all so fabulous - sort of like Ten's breathy "that's beautiful!" upon first seeing the werewolf in Tooth and Claw, except all the time.  New regeneration, new companion(s), new outlook; in a sense everything that Ten was really did die.  And while part of me misses him, another larger part just doesn't have the time, because watching Eleven is too damn much fun.

This certainly wasn't a quick or simple transition.  I went through a real grieving process for My Doctor (details are irrelevant, and vaguely embarrassing).  How many times before had fans gone through this?  "This Doctor was so good; how can the next bloke possibly measure up?"  Over and over again, though, it worked (with a possible exception of the Five to Six transition, which really wasn't Colin Baker's fault so much as his writers').  Knowing that, I resolved to remain Cautiously Optimistic.

Hard as I tried, though, I couldn't help doubting.  I'd debate myself.  I'd start with "he's so young" (not how I saw Tennant, who is all of 2 months my junior), "he's a bit odd-looking" (though so were Troughton, Tom Baker, McCoy...), and "what's with that bow tie?!".  I'd counter myself with "Moffat wouldn't have chosen  him right off the bat if he weren't brilliant" and "you can't possibly judge him on two minutes, immediately post-regeneration."  As the new series approached, I got progressively antsier.  I felt like a junkie jonesing for a fix (as perhaps I was).

Once Eleventh Hour aired, I was somewhat mollified.  All right.  Not bad.  Nothing too alarming there.  He didn't feel very Doctor-y until he walked through Ten's image to intone, "I'm the Doctor," but that's OK.  After all, by his own admission, he wasn't done cooking yet.  However, apparently that episode was all some fans needed; Smith's performance had already outstripped Tennant's in their views.

By contrast, it took me a relatively long time to warm to Eleven. It wasn't until his "funny how you can say something in your head, and it sounds fine..." leading into the credits for Vampires of Venice that I wholeheartedly embraced him in the role. Even then, he was just "a worthy successor" in my book. It was several re-viewings of the series later that I started to feel that Smith's performances are surpassing Tennant's. I think it's the way he's so Classic'ly "proper bonkers," as Moffat put it.  Really.  If you look back at Classic Who - perhaps especially at Tom Baker's over-the-top performance as Four - you'll see there's always something... a bit mental about the Doctor.  He comes off a bit of a nutter.  Ten didn't quite have that (nor, come to think of it did Five, the one Tennant considered "his" Doctor).  Quirky, perhaps, and definitely a bit odd, but not a nutter.  Not a mad man in a blue box...

I guess when all is said and done, for me it's a matter of accepting the inevitable, of embracing the present. It was great while it lasted, but Ten's time has gone; now is the Eleventh Age. Matt Smith is the Doctor and I, for one, am enjoying the hell out of it.  The Doctor is dead; long live the Doctor.

David Tennant still wins hands down on hotness, though.