Moffat Era Rewatch: Notes on "The Impossible Astronaut/ The Day of the Moon"

This should have been posted before my notes on "Curse" and "Doctor's Wife" - messed up my queue, sorry. Still, better late than never:

• ·      This is the last two-part story Moffat will write for some time for the show. As is always the case with a Moffat two parter, it’s a damn good one.
• ·      It’s worth looking at what the two-part format does for this story: it really gives scenes room to breathe, lets the episode luxuriate in spending long periods of time with its characters. The first 10-15 minutes of the story are just an epic, twisty backdrop that allows the Pond family to spend time interacting, in the diner, at lake Silencio, and in the TARDIS, becoming the familiar TARDIS crew whose story forms the spine of this season. We long scenes, crammed with character moments, jokes and cleverness: a breathing space that we won’t really see again as the Smith era becomes increasingly fast paced, taking on a hyper-compressed style of storytelling.
• ·      The Silence are fascinating: another Moffat perception monster whose central ability is basically an inversion of the Weeping Angels. Thematically, and meta-textually, they are creatures that deform the narrative, a deformation that is best seen in the way “The Impossible Astronaut’s cliffhanger is resolved with a timeskip, leaving it unclear exactly how the TARDIS crew escape the basement (although the basic answer is “they ran away”, and we get that in flashback): the Silence enter a story, and create gaps in it, blank spaces, a basic summary of how they work throughout the season.
• ·      Another metatextual threat posed by the Silence comes in the way they start disappearing into the camera cuts in “Day of the Moon”. The first example of this comes from Canton’s perspective, as he sees the hologram of a silent in the TARDIS, the second, scariest version is from Amy’s perspective, as she explores the orphanage. In both cases, the Camera records both scenes from Amy and Canton’s POV, but the scenes are shot as if the camera is an omniscient narrator: instead of having a separate, removed perspective to Amy and Canton, the audience is tricked into perceiving a silent attack the way a victim would. We think we’re watching events in real time, as the camera is depicting them as such, but we’re missing the moments where Amy and Canton see the silence, and only notice as the incongruities in apparently linear events become apparent. The Silence alter the way the camera records events, the meaning of its visual language, in a continuation of the Moffat era’s push for complex visual storytelling, a push that will become increasingly apparent in two successive episodes later in this season.
• ·      Also interesting, and indicative of the general approach the series is taking, is the story’s use of American iconography: it is full of it, as we are given Apollo spacesuits, area 51, an American diner, a yellow school bus, the Valley of Lost souls, and the Hoover Dam. The show is reveling in the fact that this is a story filmed in America, and is designed to draw in an American audience in America. And it succeeds: series six successfully changed Doctor Who from a British phenomenon with a passionate cult audience outside of the UK to a global phenomenon, with a particularly strong fanbase in America. This push evident in the “My name is Amy Pond” opening that was used throughout the season in the American broadcast: the season is clearly designed to be a jumping on point for a new audience, and in that regard, Series Six and the promotion surrounding it was a huge success.
• ·      Other American iconography played with, and criticized by a fair portion of fans, comes in this episode’s twist on the “Celebrity Historical” format: Richard Nixon. It is fair enough to argue that he is arguably a little too cozily treated, but to compare his depiction to that of another reactionary 20^th Century world leader, Nixon is not lionized in the way Churchill was. Compare the Doctor’s final scenes with Churchill and Nixon, and the different approaches the episodes take in portraying their respective “Celebrity historical figure” become clear: Churchill is celebrated as a British icon, whereas the Doctor responds to Nixon’s request for reassurance regarding his future by dodging giving an answer and tipping his hat to David Frost. This story’s critique of Nixon’s politics is far more explicit than “Victory’s” portrayal of Churchill.
• ·      And as with Nixon, the overall aim of the story’s use of American iconography is to lay out grounds for a critique that will become increasingly evident over the course of series six. The story may heavily trade on the tropes of American cult TV while surrounding itself with American iconography, but it does this while subtly building the grounds for a season long critique of this structure. This is best captured in Melody’s line “The spaceman’s coming to eat me!”: this format, and its arc based, speculation-heavy nature is a threat to Doctor Who. The spaceman comes to “eat” young River, and starts the story by killing the Doctor – the American iconography and format of television explicitly risks consuming and killing the show. This threat of iconography goes hand in hand with the nature of the Silence: the threat this season comes in the form of narrative breakdown: the threat that the show will be consumed and pulled apart by external forces.
• ·      Basically, this is a great story because everyone is giving it their all; the writing is clever, with witty dialogue and bold ideas, given room to breathe; the direction is smart and inventive, interpreting the script cleverly and delivering its complex ideas with clarity; the production team have put their all into an overseas shoot in America, and the cast are all settled and clicking in their roles, having great fun with their material and working together. The result is two enormously confident, incredibly successful episodes of television.