11.16: Day of the Moon

In which the Doctor brainwashes the human race to do a genocide.

Broadcast: April 2011

Watched: December 2021

Again, I’m not sure it makes that much sense – the Doctor’s clever solution is to effectively brainwash the entire human race? Statistically speaking, not all the Silence are getting off the planet alive, are they? Someone is going to beat a Silent to death and then not remember it? – but it’s such an amazing watch I’m not sure it matters. Which is basically the theme of this season. 

Six minute pre-credits this time, including two shocking reversals in whose side we think Canton is on. Lots of great moments. “Is that a body bag? It’s empty.” “How ‘bout that.” River jumping off the roof. Darvill’s steeling-himself-to-die acting. The companions sitting up in the bodybags, and the Doctor kissing Rory’s head. Also, just the incredible visuals of Amy running from some men in black through some desert in Utah.

That’s completely incredible, the rest of the episode merely very good. The scenes in the creepy abandoned children’s home, with everyone suddenly noticing marks appearing on their arms, are terrifying, and prefigures The Angels Take Manhattan. (Brain friend Renfrew is a Dracula reference, yeah?) The photos of Amy with her baby are weirdly unnerving. 

The Doctor in the nose of Apollo 11 is great, though not as great as the running joke in which Richard Nixon walks in to save the day; or River and Rory being dressed up as White House staffers; or the Doctor ending the story by telling Nixon to trust nobody and spend the rest of his life being incredibly paranoid, like he’s starting the Great Fire of London again. [He did that in 1982’s The Visitation.]

The two big emotional bits sort of share the episode’s structural problems, in that they’re quite powerful but if you think about them no best not. 

Moffat was clearly pleased with “She can always hear me” because he inverted/stole it for Name, but the emotional component is a bit confused... We’re meant to feel pathos when Amy is calling for the Doctor, not Rory; then there’s a bit where we’re meant to think she’s talking to the Doctor (“Life was so boring before you dropped out of the sky”), but then it turns out she was actually talking to Rory. Even though he in no sense dropped out of the sky. (Is Amy lying?) Then there’s the last bit where Rory is clearly shitting himself that Amy is pregnant with the Doctor’s baby, and it’s played as a joke. 

River kissing the Doctor for the first time from his perspective is meant to be heartbreaking because she’s under the impression they meet in reverse order so this will be the last for her. Except she knows they don’t meet in reverse order because she’s in this episode twice (even if we don’t know that yet). And also if they did why would they compare diaries? So River being sad makes no sense.

Anyway, this is niggling, because it’s great. Two other questions:

• Amy sees Madame Kovarian for the first time. So when was she kidnapped? The point when she’s a prisoner of the Silence would be the obvious moment but she sees Kovarian first? Just feels messy. 

• Is Canton a temporary companion partly to ask the dumb questions so no one else has to? (Love Nixon trying to be nice to him at the end but then discovering he’s a massive homophobe.)