Doctor Who 6.2: “Day of the Moon”

[annathepiper]

Picoreview: Even after several days I’m still not entirely sure what the heck happened in that episode. Or, for that matter, what I think of it.

Random thoughts and reactions, in no particular order:

Still not a fan of that oversaturated color look.

It occurred to me only after the episode aired that much was made over the whole “bringing Doctor Who to America” thing–and yet, this seems to have meant making this story a “bangy bangy shooty shooty” story and I’m not really sure I approve of that in Doctor Who. I appreciate the attempt to reach out to American audiences, but please, Mr. Moffat, don’t go too far in that direction and lose the feel of story that made us American fans start watching it to begin with.

That said, goddamn River Song is awesome in a firefight. And I’ll be sad if further appearances of an accordingly younger River means she winds up losing some of that edge.

Did anybody else besides me think Amy had a bit of a Scully look going on when she went into the creepy former orphanage along with Canton? And also, CREEPY ORPHANAGE FULL OF SILENTS okay yeah that was creepy, it’s official. Creepy wackjob of a caretaker, too.

Watching the episode on BBC America with commercial interruption makes the whole thing feel a bit disjointed to begin with, but the very nature of this story seemed to aggravate this. More than once through the course of the episode we were all wondering if we missed something. Now, I’m pretty sure we didn’t miss any actual content–at least, I THINK we didn’t miss any, and I really hope that BBC America isn’t sacrificing content anymore to wedge commercials in there–and that the rushed nature of the plot was intentional. But then, it still felt way too rushed to me. And I say this as someone who came into the fandom with the new show to begin with, and who was quite accustomed to the RTD pacing of plots. I really, REALLY hope things get less frenetic as we get into the rest of the season.

I liked Rory’s uncertainty as to whether Amy was calling out for him or the Doctor, but I really hope we don’t make this an ongoing theme. We’ve had Amy have to reassure Rory that it’s actually him she loves a couple times now. A couple times is fine, but let’s not make it an ongoing thing. Let’s let Rory get secure in the love he’s won. He’ll be more awesome a character for it.

Relatedly, though, the conversation between Amy and the Doctor about her apparent pregnancy and then sudden lack thereof–whole lot of intriguing there.

Especially given that crunchy little scene with the little girl apparently REGENERATING WTF?!? at the end. Oh man, the theories that can arise in my brain from that. Toying with the idea that if that was in fact Amy and Rory’s child, did the TARDIS tinker around with her DNA? Did she pop out a baby Time Lord? And what the hell happened that Amy was apparently pregnant and then suddenly not?

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Comments

[morgie.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the way the screen flipped out at the end when the Doctor was scanning her.

[annathepiper]

Quite!

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

I'm not an artist or photographer or anything like that so I'm unsure what you mean by oversaturated color. Can you give me an example?

Rory is definitely my favourite companion right now. And definitely in top 5 for all time Dr Who.

Schrödinger's baby. Oh yes there's a lot of intriguing going on. And I trust Moffat to give us answers eventually, but not too soon. And he'll probably leave some questions for the next season, because hey why not. Plus what's the point of having all the loose ends tied up. That's far too tidy and neat for me.

Also enjoyed Mark Sheppard's performance as Canton. I keep seeing him in various SF type things and like it when he pops up.

[annathepiper]

I'm not sure I can point at a specific example for you since it was a stylistic decision in how they filmed the entire episode. But when I talk about oversaturation of color, I talk about exactly that--all of the color in the episode was dialed up to high intensity, giving everything a sort of surreal, dreamlike quality. The other time I saw that done recently was in a very bad Syfy channel movie, so this wasn't really a visual association I wanted to make with Doctor Who.

I do continue to be pleased with the whole idea of married Companions, and yeah, Rory's pretty awesome.

Sure, I don't want all the answers about the little girl either--and you're right, Moffat's good at leaving answers till next season, as we've already learned from the last go-round with series 5. I'm just getting a start on the theorizing, is all. :)

This is the third thing I've ever seen Sheppard in, the other two being Firefly and Battlestar Galactica, and yeah, he's consistently good.

[kairee.livejournal.com]

A season of Doctor Who is typically 13 episodes.

A time lord has 13 regenerations.

I have this funny feeling that the little girl regenerating is this season's theme, and the mystery surrounding her.

[annathepiper]

Eh, I doubt the number of episodes in the season has any connection to how many regenerations a Time Lord gets, especially given the recent brouhaha over RTD seeming to scoff at that 13 rule with Eleven's appearance in the Sarah Jane Adventures.

But clearly, yes, the little girl is going to be a plot arc.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this was a very perplexing episode! I enjoyed it, all the while I was going "what the actual fuck?" (yes, I said this aloud for the first time ever).

I loved River Song. It broke my heart when the Doctor's first kiss was her last. I'm dying to see what her story is going to be.

Yes! Amy was totally Scully at the orphanage, complete with X-Files style "let's split up and investigate scary stuff separately!" action.

The whole business with Nixon cracked me up every time he appeared; he was much-needed comic relief.

There was definitely a weird vibe going on with Rory, Amy, and the Doctor. king_chiron claims to be convinced that Schrodinger's Fetus is Amy and the Doctor's, the result of some illicit messing around that they both deleted from their hard drives. I'm not sure that's something they'd have on Doctor Who...

[annathepiper]

Amy even had the obligatory Giant Flashlight. Which, as any diehard X-Files fan knows, is ALWAYS a bad idea!

I am NOT AT ALL buying that the S-F (hee hee hee) is a product of Amy and the Doctor, because you are absolutely right, they wouldn't or at least I THINK they wouldn't pull that on Doctor Who. Torchwood, absolutely. Doctor Who, not so much. It's supposed to be the family show after all.

[arjache.livejournal.com]

I watched the episode commercial-free as an iTunes rental, and total runtime came out to about 46 minutes. My guess is they didn't cut anything out. It'd be awfully silly of them to cut stuff out and then leave it out in the iTMS version.

[annathepiper]

Good to know! Thanks. :)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

i'm hoping that a lot of the "wait, did we miss something" in that episode will be handled by later episodes this season. i assume so, given moffat's past behavior, but i'm still sort of holding off until we find out more.

[annathepiper]

I dunno. I'm mostly not sure we'll get these things filled in just because the parts of the episode that provoked that reaction out of me were, upon reflection, things that made sense within the context of the plot and ultimately didn't actually need much explanation beyond what we saw on screen. The problem for me was more that the pacing was so fast, and just disjointed enough, that it was a bit of a mental leap to keep up.

But we'll see!

[batyatoon]

Scully vibe: oh yes definitely. :D

The Silents! I really didn't think anything could be creepier than the Weeping Angels. I WAS WROOOONG.

I think I agree with you about Rory. I love Rory, and because of that I love his insecurity and feelings of inadequacy, but also because of that I'd hate for him to never get past them.

I am very very skeptical about this Schroedinger's Baby thing, but I am willing to reserve judgment and wait to see where it goes. And The Tiniest Timelord (lady?) is definitely intriguing.

[annathepiper]

We re-watched the last season's finale last night when we had a friend over, and it was fun to see Rory as the Nestine duplicate again--just to be reminded that at least from a mental standpoint, Rory is by now actually older than that Doctor. solarbird wants to see Rory give the Doctor a bit of a smackdown about that at some point. :)