The Impossible Astronaut

"Let's see who tries to kill us and work backwards..." Are you keeping up?

I'm back for another season's fun, and working twice as hard to fill the lamentable gap caused by Behind the Sofa's extermination.

If you're new to Malcassairo, three rules apply. NO SPOILERS FOR FUTURE EPISODES. I am not especially interested in serious speculation on future episodes either. There will be spoilers for episodes I am reviewing, though, so if you haven't seen this one you have been warned.

Team Traken - now boosted up to four members, wahey! - were joined by my male parental unit for a Who party; and I served drinks, growled at anyone who would dare make a squeak, and finally, established a River-free space. Team Traken are united in their dislike of the character, but sometime soon after realising she would be back I got bored of their whining. I griped about Series 5. A lot. My complaints were valid - I wasn't moaning for the sake of it - It's been a fun year. But I feel like I've exhausted all the entertainment to be had from it. I was bored - I'd rather ignore the flaws, and concentrate on the shiney as I seem so capable of doing for those other great classics of the series. Even though on rereads, my angry reviews are far better then those which are kind. We'd made all the arguments, and particularly those regarding the much reviled Ms Song, so I held the party on the grounds that no one was to complain about her.

Perhaps this created the requisite atmosphere of optimism. That or Impossible Astronaut was simply fantastic, and not just for the Adjective-Noun pair title that Who fans find so pleasing (and to think how popular The One With The Whale would have been if only they'd called it or The Star Whale or The Whale of Terror. Or The City of Death, considering it racks up so many more (i.e. more than two) deaths than that episode, if the entire Jagaroth species doesn't count. Call it Whale In Space and it might seem good by comparison)

The much hyped filming in Utah had seemed rather like that bus in Dubai which was the only information Gallifrey had to report on for the whole of 2009 - FILMING EXCLUSIVE! The bus has broken down! - plus a cynical attempt to cash in via BBC Worldwide. In fact, Utah is one of this episode's strengths, for The Impossible Alien is primarily about paranoia - that oft-praised preserve of the 1960s. It draws together a fantastic set of resonances: Utah, Roswell, the moon landings. The villains are a clever blend of iconic "grey" aliens and iconic Men In Black, who can make you forget. At the height of the cold war, starring Nixon, the president nobody could trust - who in turn, now, cannot trust his own FBI and needs an outsider to help. "I can't trust anyone," he moans to Colbert, before inexplicably encountering the ultimate outsiders and putting blank faith in them.

Yet I had already noted the paranoia, in the TARDIS. The Doctor's twitchy darkness - I liked it. River Song, whom he cannot trust. And like Nixon, he too finds himself having to trust in Amy. Optimism: what Doctor Who does best. One can imagine what a Blake's 7 episode based around the concept of trust would look like (and some of us poor sods don't have to).

This interlaced approach produced something far more nuanced than I had expected, that Russell T touch I had so missed. A twining of the monster-plot, with the emotional plot, and underlying theme into one beautiful holistic experience. The same cannot be said of Dubai - the dunes may have been deep, but not thematically so. It was just a landscape. This? Is a state of mind.

Perhaps this coherence tuned down the Moffiness to an acceptable level. My brain was busy shouting about how sick of amnesia, single-concept-monsters, creepy children, shambling faces in spacesuits, amnesia, token deaths and using the phrase "bumpy wumpy" does not distract us from the timey wimey. My brain is reminding me that this is the third amnesiac plotline; and the second monster you can't look at; and the second shambling space suit, and also the fifth time Matt Smith has died on screen. But it came together into a satisyfing whole, making it feel like the ultimate Moffathon instead of a greatest hits compilation - I would choose to criticise his earlier episodes in comparison to this. I'd still criticise it for being familiar, but as it remained unpredictable moment by moment I can forgive it for now.

Best of all, River Song was...OK. We all agreed she had improved, but perhaps they were lying to shut me up. I felt that she had mellowed as a character; or, perhaps, the acting has improved. However - by accident or design - this episode compensated for most of my dislike.

Starting with that whole "I know something you don't know" schtick. It's a great concept, but in practice always came across as smug. People who are smug about things they won't tell you are never pleasant. The Doctor's death paradoxically puts us on side with River. When she says "spoilers", we know what she can't say and why. We're in on the secret: our point of view has changed. For the first time, it feels like a game plan, an arc and I wonder if our initial dislike was part of this process.

And with the Doctor dead, River becomes a much needed liferaft. For a whole five minutes, she's not pissing you off by being more competant - she's the only competant one left. Usually, it is the Doctor who the audience look to solve their emotional needs - I want him to save the puppy! I want him to punish the wrongdoers! And when he does, we feel safe. For those five minutes, the Doctor is gone, and when he comes back we look to River, becase we want her to thump him in the face. I found the slap strangely disappointing in comparison! Those characteristics which, in the past, had seemed antagonistic, unecessary, and like poorly thought out feminism aided this transformation. We also, for the first time, get to see her forging relationships instead of "just accept that she and the Doctor have some relationship, OK?". The scenario makes River, Amy and Rory into conspirators - they have a connection, and we can see it, unlike merely being told to accept a connection which at some point may have happened outside of canon. The parallel made between Amy and River by Rory is particularly effective - we have seen how cruel Amy has been to Rory, forging an effective moment of empathy.

These points on competancy and perspective are underlined by a plot which requires the Doctor to take on a companion-like role. He is asking questions, others are withholding answers for their own agenda. He is following them, on trust. And he is not central (yet) to working out the main plot. Instead, he is this plots victim, it's object. For once, River isn't upstaging him by trying to do the same job with her similar skillset. Instead, they compliment one another - and I remember, as she tweaks the TARDIS, how fun competant companions such as Romana and Nyssa were. In this sense, she is the non-human-female-contemporary-Londoner assistant I had been hoping for.

For the first time, we see her fallible! This is important, given her innate Suishness, and especially given that scene in The Big Bang. Not even Chuck Norris can make a Dalek beg for mercy, Here, the gun runs out of bullets when she needs one more most. Serves her right for wasting one on the Stetson...this is acknowledged in the episode and a real step forward. Though not, of course, why she can safely ping the hat off a head, but not hit the far closer, far larger, lumbering astronaut, while runcibuling the water; or indeed why she felt her aim would be improved if she ran while doing it. But you can't have it all.

She lost even more Sue points for the attitude of fellow characters. It always bothered me that somehow, Moff had shoehorned his pet into a major plotline and the main cast loved her too.
Not today! The Doctor takes her to task for being a mystery, and clearly thinks she's awful. This attitude shift is more satisfying for me, for my point of view characters to be sharing my point of view again. There is a strong difference between a character who annoys, and a character who is meant to annoy. So, for once, the banter and teasing became two sided and had a proper frisson now.

I have surmised before that not knowing her history made her impossible to put in any sort of context. If she is Jenny, or the Rani, or Patience, or Romana, that gives her certain excuses for her perfection or preknowledge that "she's just some person" doesn't. But seeing her express what we always sort-of knew - that he goes backwards while she goes forwards, makes me think that ultimately - when I understand - her "final" episode will become a classic (sans that awful dream sequence, which is still misjudged). Now, for just one second, I felt a level of empathy for The Forest of the Dead which I have never before. Who knows? I might even be calling it an elegaic farewell to an iconic part of the mythology! Last night, extreme personal stress caused me to become a fully-subscribing fan of Martha Jones, so stranger things have happened.

It brings us back to point of view. When we first encountered River Song, our point of view was - as usual - that of the Doctor - "who on earth is this awful woman?". Every time Library is rewatched, with future episodes in mind, it takes is further from him and closer to her until ultimately, we will know her completely and be on her side and alienated from his. An episode which changes each time you see it, until you forget. How very Moff.



And lets talk about forgetting. As theoretically interesting as Amy's plotline was it, her habit of forgetting any major event killed any emotional development she might have had. Rendering last season rather cold and detached, for me at least. At least, now, that irritating trait is turned to good use. We still don't know about the crack; maybe the Threat is related to it?

The design is good - though Castellanne felt the mouths were too Dementor-like, with the unknown alien menace landing smack in the middle of uncanny valley (I know the press and the forums know and insist on using their names...you don't think that's a bit of a big spoiler?). These scenes were amazing - properly exciting, properly scary, and involving as we kept hoping that those companions would do what they were hired to, and scream. Much cushion-clutching going on in our household...

...and it wasn't until I was trying to sleep I put my finger on what was quite so threatening about them. Narratively, of course, it's great at raising tension ("There's two people having breakfast and there's a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that's a surprise. But if it doesn't..."). But the fact they could be in the room without you knowing makes them the ultimate Doctor Who villain. The most archetypal Who puts the monsters in the home - plastic dummies - and exploits fear of the known. There is no reason why there isn't one here now...


I felt, occasionally, there were too many companions, with some poorly directed scenes showing too much standing around. And I'm a fan of the "crowded TARDIS". But that was, perhaps, enthusiasm and now nostalgia. Not without cause did he utter "Brave heart, Canton!". In general, I thought the direction was good - together with the writing, either the budget has gone up or the defecit is more smartly covered. Despite the rather heavy concepts at work, it was well articulated and not overly confusing - I particularly liked Rory explaining to Amy what had just happened. Although dad did ask "is Rory still an Auton?", and we shushed him because the answer is "no", but we're still not sure why. The heroes investigating the Doctor's future murder is a cool concept, so again I can almost forgive them for killing him for the fifty-billionth time. I'll allow it this time, but don't do it again...

Onto the ongoing project of trying to work out who 11 is - and you'd think it would be easy for an episode which used the "Doctor who?" quip not once but twice.

Obviously, he does have an emergant 7 streak - but unlike 7, who seems to do it out of peverse enjoyment, it's more likely 11 just doesn't think of the effect it's going to cause. We have already observed he is one of the less-human-competant Doctors. Or rather, if he's not like 7 now...he will be in the future. Friend 2 noticed he spent a lot of this episode upside down - perhaps we can identify that as a trope? I'm just happy that hats are becoming a trope - Friend 4 wore a celebratory Stetson; I liked his space helmet. I also liked the older Doctor - as if Matt Smith's percieved old soul wasn't ancient enough already.

His death as it stands reminded me strongly of Logopolis. The astronaut has a similar, white-waxen look from a distance; the sound is cut out in both; the shot is very similar; while this maybe overstating it, one happens by a lake, the other on a bridge; and both accompany news of the Doctor's death. That mannerism of Matt Smith's seemed rather unmistakeable - the way Tom Baker seems to crumble on hearing it is one of the cruellest moments in the classic series.

First parters rely on their second to see if a coherent whole is being produced. It's likely some of this won't be tied up for weeks, but I have faith that part two will be quite the treat given Moff's avowed technique of making part 2 a second episode, not a continuation of the first. We all like Mark Shepperd and hope he gets something to do then. I guess so. We also thought from the trailer that the 9/10 TARDIS might be back, but the shots here reveal it was just close-ups on this TARDIS. Probably for the best - but we were right, there was another TARDIS in there; and Adrasta and I were right last year when we speculated that the Lodger TARDIS would be back. Admittedly our theory was still cooler, but I'm happy and excited. Or, as Castellane put it in the episode's only vocal interruption,

"GOODNESS!"



Other Points

• "And two of them fancied me" - hello, gay agenda! They've always pigeonholed RTD for this, but initially it was actually Moff who packed the most into his episodes. This is one of the cheeky (and I dare say, brave) uses I've seen - implying that two of America's founding fathers were queer? That's going to cause some red faces.
• Given all the thought I've done on gender recently, it stuck out when everyone assumed the child was male due to the "male name". I am interested by how they have since undermined it - the voice of a girl, the name of a boy, and seemingly the face of a boy too. So what's going on there...?
  
• DWM suggested Amy was a step backwards for her middle class stat. While I don't necessarily agree - while in the context of the entire show it's very familiar, it's actually an unusual choice in the context of the new - the shot of her and Rory hopping off the bus ('cus they could just afford to go to Utah, randomly) with backpacks amused me as very "gap yah".
• I am fairly sure Rory made credits for the Christmas special. Still made me happy to see it here again though!
• The idea that the Doctor in some way "created" and ruined River is interesting
• "President please help me" taps into a very cliche American sensibility. Still spooky though.
  
• Again, I am reminded of Lawrence Miles - the Doctor at his own funeral in Alien Bodies; the surprise death in Interference. I'm not sure this means anything, except that I admire his work and consider it canon.
  
• Caitlin Moran suggested a comparison to Alzheimers.
  
• I thought the on-screen, fullbodied explosion was a bit much, but no one else did so perhaps I'm sensitive.
• The Doctor describes Amy as "the legs", confirming everything I ever thought about that character's underdevelopment.
• When River wearily picks up the can and grimly intones "We do what we do best", my first reaction was "burn stuff?"

Lines I liked
"She's doing it again. Doctor Song sir, She's packing"

"Clayton Delware III How many can there be? Well....3 actually...."

"That's OK, you were my second choice for President."

"He can't alter his own past - it would rip a hole in the universe and destroy everything."
"He's done it before!"
"And, to be fair, the universe DID explode..."

Doctor: Vietnam, Watergate.
River: Also some good stuff.
Doctor: Not nearly enough.
River: Hippie!
Doctor: Archaeologist!

"I'm being extremely clever up here and there's no-one to stand around looking impressed. What's the point in having you all?"

River: This is cold. Even for you, this is cold!
"Or, hello?"

Rory (when the Doctor asks him if everyone is angry with him): "I'll find out."

"Do not compliment the intruder!"

"One of them is worth listening to!

"Florida, where the spacemen live"

"No life signs - the worst kind" reminded me of Earthshock

"Bless!"

Speculation

I am not interested in discussing this in any detail, because I'm just tossing around ideas. The moment theories get indepth, you're storywriting and setting yourself up for a fall when yours is better. Like my extreme disappointment when last year's megatheory went to pot. However:

• is that other TARDIS the Doctor's? It still could be, even if it does look a bit eeevil. I'm going to keep coughing "Valeyard" in this corner, although if it is a Time-villain someone like the Monk or Toymaker seems more likely. Will this be the exciting voice from the trailer?
• I think Amy is pregnant; but I think her choice to tell him there was her forgetting. I noted both she and River experiencing a sickness - so maybe Amy rationalised it as that other thing she had to tell him.
• Was that the silence as he talked to the astronaut?
• Given the Logopolis parallels, and that Friend 2 noticed they were the same height, is the astronaut a third Doctor?
• Given the fact characters wouldn't be able to remember occasions they have seen the Threat, and Moff's past behavior, I have a theory that we will see an episode at least revisited with the Threat revealed to be there all along. Yes. Just like with the non-chronological Doctor appearance last time. Possibly in the previous season.
• It's still possible that the Doctor already knows about the future death, although not sure for what dramatic purpose.
• It'll be unpleasant if Amy's shot at the astronaut is going to cause the Doctor's future death in some sort of closed loop.

Notes that I don't understand now but may in the future

• "Yeah, just a bit"
• Mrs Rob
• no interfere
• bad move
• music
• "Whole earth"
• Well, 3