auntiemeesh (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
auntiemeesh) wrote2011-04-24 02:33 pm
auntiemeesh) wrote2011-04-24 02:33 pm
Entry tags:
The Impossible Astronaut
Okay, time to sit down and try to write up some coherent Doctor Who thoughts.
*The Doctor doesn't change much. Two hundred years later, he's still wearing the same clothes and spouting the same ridiculous nonsense:
"I wear a stetson now. Stetsons are cool." River shows up and shoots it off his head.
Amy: "Since when do you drink wine?"
Doctor: "I'm 1103. I must have drunk it some time. *takes a swig, immediately spits it out in disgust* No, wine's horrid."
*We get to see Amy and Rory at home in their version of domestic bliss, tracking down the Doctor through his ridiculously conspicuous interactions with history. They look happy together. It took Amy a long time to get over her childish infatuation with the Doctor and realize that when push came to shove, it really was Rory that she was in love with.
*River is pretty much always awesome.
Hapless Storm Cage guard: "You better get down here, sir. She's doing it again. Dr. Song, sir. She's packing."
Considering the fact that the Storm Cage seems to be some sort of maximum security prison for extremely bad people, it tells us quite a lot about River that she sends everyone into a complete frenzy just by stating that she plans to leave. One would expect a guard in that situation to just laugh at her, but the guard's extreme consternation indicates that she has a history of escaping.
Her timeline is difficult to understand or predict.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eve11 and I spent a good bit of time on the drive home on Wednesday trying to decide if it's a straight reverse linear sort of deal, but it seems to be a bit more jumbled than that. My sense is that when we see her, it's pretty much a progressive reversal of her life, while things are a bit more jumbled around in the Doctor's timeline, which is why she needs to keep a diary of their interactions.
*There's a huge amount of set-up and very little pay-off in this episode. We get introduced to the Silence, or the Silents, or whatever. Creepy damn things. On a scale of One to Get The Fuck Off My TV! they probably rank somewhere right above the Smilers from The Beast Below, but below the Weeping Angels from Blink (oddly enough, the angels from season five were far more menacing, since they actually killed people instead of just displacing them in time, but they were less creepy, just due to familiarity I suppose, plus, they were positioned as the less scary thing in that episode, running from the Crack).
*Amy sees the Silent and then, after forgetting the second time, doubles over in discomfort. Later, the Silent tells Amy she must tell the Doctor "What he must know and what he must never know." She keeps almost remembering that she has to tell the Doctor something and finally blurts out that she's pregnant. Huh? River also felt sick after an encounter with the Silent. Is she pregnant, too? Did the Silent magically impregnate them? Or is it just a weird coincidence? Does everyone get sick after forgetting and we just don't know because we don't actually see anyone else encountering the Silent? Actually, no, scratch that, Rory sees them at the end of the episode and doesn't do the stomach clutching bit.
*We meet the younger Delaware, who's moping and bitter because he's been kicked out of the FBI.
Nixon: "You were my second choice for this, Mr. Delaware."
Delaware: "That's okay. You're my second choice for President, Mr. Nixon."
Later, after being exposed to the TARDIS and all the creepy shit going on:
Delaware: "So, I was in a bar, having a drink. Tell me honestly, am I still there?"
Amy: "Fraid not."
I like Delaware. He's able to adapt to new situations quickly and responds quite well to the rather shocking revelations that go along with exposure to the TARDIS. Oh, wait, did I mention that Delaware is played by Mark Sheppard? He's had tons of roles, but he'll always be Badger, from Firefly, to me. I spent my first viewing of the episode trying to figure out why he seemed so familiar (through bad sound, an American accent and poor visual). And they got his dad to play Old Delaware. Pretty cool!
Upon the Doctor bursting in on his convo with the Prez, and the Secret Service Guy's desire to shoot him:
Security Guy: "Mr. President, that man is a clear and present danger to..."
Delaware: "Mr. President, 'that man' walked in here with a big blue box and three of his friends. And that's the man he walked past. *points to security guy* One of them's worth listening to. I say we give him five minutes."
There were some interesting bits with River showing, once again, that the Doctor is still an idiot when it comes to the TARDIS. He decides to go in discreetly and does something which sets off an awful racket, which she then silences.
Doctor: "Did you do something?"
River: "No, just watching."
Then he tries to turn the TARDIS invisible.
Rory: "You can turn the TARDIS invisible?" as the Doctor turns on some flood lights.
River: (flipping another switch and turning the lights off) "Very nearly."
Doctor: "Ah, did you touch something?"
River: "Just admiring your skills, Sweetie."
Doctor: "Good, learn something."
*The rest of the episode is getting Team TARDIS up to speed on what's happening in 1969. A little girl calling the President about a Space Man that's about to eat her, and the Doctor using his best Doctory powers of deduction to determine exactly where she's calling from. Nixon comes off looking pretty dumb, but at least he had the sense to take the Doctor's help when it's offered.
*The crew then takes off for Florida, where we see lots of ooey-goey alien bio-tech stuff, mixed with human space suits in an abandoned warehouse - apparently where the little girl was calling the prez from, although the phones have been disconnected.
*River finds a sewer tunnel with some sort of cables running into it and wants to explore.
Doctor: "Shout if you get in trouble."
River: "Don't worry, I'm quite the screamer. *disappears into tunnel* Now there's a spoiler for you."
*We get to see a lot more of the Silents, lurking about in old, old tunnels, making River forget and clutch her stomach.
*River gets all hot and bothered over a locked hatch in the tunnels and just has to see what's on the other side, which turns out to be something that looks very much like the TARDIS/ship thing from season five's episode, The Lodger. Something happens to Rory, involving the Silents and bright light. River turns around and Rory's gone.
*Back topside at the warehouse, we find out that Delaware got kicked out of the FBI for wanting to get married.
Amy: "Is that a crime?"
Delaware: "Yes."
Since when do you have to be single to be in the FBI?
*A bit later, Amy and the Doctor find Delaware stunned on the ground. Amy drops the bomb about being preggers, which it seems like an odd time for it to be urgent for her to tell him this. And then, a mysterious astronaut, possibly the same one who killed the Doctor in the beginning, shows up. Amy freaks out, grabs a gun and shoots, just in time to see the visor open to reveal the little girl. Dun dun duuuunnnnnn! And we get the closing credits.
This leaves a ton of questions. Was it the little girl that killed the Doctor or are there other scary astronaut types running around. My first thought was that it was River, since I, like a lot of other people, had the sense that River killed the Doctor, which crime gets her imprisoned in the Storm Cage. Regardless, how did the astronaut show up in the lake like that? The Doctor was very calm when going to face his death. He clearly knew who was in the suit and what was about to happen, and had no intention of fighting it.
Is the 1103 yr old Doctor really and truly dead? If he is, that spells the end of the show after Matt Smith, which seems unlikely, so there has to be some explanation. But Delaware rules out the idea of a clone, which means this is something that's going to have to be undone. How is the Doctor going to mess with his timeline without blowing up the Universe, or is that the event that triggers the TARDIS explosion in Big Bang?
Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel, for more thoughts and reactions.
*The Doctor doesn't change much. Two hundred years later, he's still wearing the same clothes and spouting the same ridiculous nonsense:
"I wear a stetson now. Stetsons are cool." River shows up and shoots it off his head.
Amy: "Since when do you drink wine?"
Doctor: "I'm 1103. I must have drunk it some time. *takes a swig, immediately spits it out in disgust* No, wine's horrid."
*We get to see Amy and Rory at home in their version of domestic bliss, tracking down the Doctor through his ridiculously conspicuous interactions with history. They look happy together. It took Amy a long time to get over her childish infatuation with the Doctor and realize that when push came to shove, it really was Rory that she was in love with.
*River is pretty much always awesome.
Hapless Storm Cage guard: "You better get down here, sir. She's doing it again. Dr. Song, sir. She's packing."
Considering the fact that the Storm Cage seems to be some sort of maximum security prison for extremely bad people, it tells us quite a lot about River that she sends everyone into a complete frenzy just by stating that she plans to leave. One would expect a guard in that situation to just laugh at her, but the guard's extreme consternation indicates that she has a history of escaping.
Her timeline is difficult to understand or predict.
eve11 and I spent a good bit of time on the drive home on Wednesday trying to decide if it's a straight reverse linear sort of deal, but it seems to be a bit more jumbled than that. My sense is that when we see her, it's pretty much a progressive reversal of her life, while things are a bit more jumbled around in the Doctor's timeline, which is why she needs to keep a diary of their interactions. *There's a huge amount of set-up and very little pay-off in this episode. We get introduced to the Silence, or the Silents, or whatever. Creepy damn things. On a scale of One to Get The Fuck Off My TV! they probably rank somewhere right above the Smilers from The Beast Below, but below the Weeping Angels from Blink (oddly enough, the angels from season five were far more menacing, since they actually killed people instead of just displacing them in time, but they were less creepy, just due to familiarity I suppose, plus, they were positioned as the less scary thing in that episode, running from the Crack).
*Amy sees the Silent and then, after forgetting the second time, doubles over in discomfort. Later, the Silent tells Amy she must tell the Doctor "What he must know and what he must never know." She keeps almost remembering that she has to tell the Doctor something and finally blurts out that she's pregnant. Huh? River also felt sick after an encounter with the Silent. Is she pregnant, too? Did the Silent magically impregnate them? Or is it just a weird coincidence? Does everyone get sick after forgetting and we just don't know because we don't actually see anyone else encountering the Silent? Actually, no, scratch that, Rory sees them at the end of the episode and doesn't do the stomach clutching bit.
*We meet the younger Delaware, who's moping and bitter because he's been kicked out of the FBI.
Nixon: "You were my second choice for this, Mr. Delaware."
Delaware: "That's okay. You're my second choice for President, Mr. Nixon."
Later, after being exposed to the TARDIS and all the creepy shit going on:
Delaware: "So, I was in a bar, having a drink. Tell me honestly, am I still there?"
Amy: "Fraid not."
I like Delaware. He's able to adapt to new situations quickly and responds quite well to the rather shocking revelations that go along with exposure to the TARDIS. Oh, wait, did I mention that Delaware is played by Mark Sheppard? He's had tons of roles, but he'll always be Badger, from Firefly, to me. I spent my first viewing of the episode trying to figure out why he seemed so familiar (through bad sound, an American accent and poor visual). And they got his dad to play Old Delaware. Pretty cool!
Upon the Doctor bursting in on his convo with the Prez, and the Secret Service Guy's desire to shoot him:
Security Guy: "Mr. President, that man is a clear and present danger to..."
Delaware: "Mr. President, 'that man' walked in here with a big blue box and three of his friends. And that's the man he walked past. *points to security guy* One of them's worth listening to. I say we give him five minutes."
There were some interesting bits with River showing, once again, that the Doctor is still an idiot when it comes to the TARDIS. He decides to go in discreetly and does something which sets off an awful racket, which she then silences.
Doctor: "Did you do something?"
River: "No, just watching."
Then he tries to turn the TARDIS invisible.
Rory: "You can turn the TARDIS invisible?" as the Doctor turns on some flood lights.
River: (flipping another switch and turning the lights off) "Very nearly."
Doctor: "Ah, did you touch something?"
River: "Just admiring your skills, Sweetie."
Doctor: "Good, learn something."
*The rest of the episode is getting Team TARDIS up to speed on what's happening in 1969. A little girl calling the President about a Space Man that's about to eat her, and the Doctor using his best Doctory powers of deduction to determine exactly where she's calling from. Nixon comes off looking pretty dumb, but at least he had the sense to take the Doctor's help when it's offered.
*The crew then takes off for Florida, where we see lots of ooey-goey alien bio-tech stuff, mixed with human space suits in an abandoned warehouse - apparently where the little girl was calling the prez from, although the phones have been disconnected.
*River finds a sewer tunnel with some sort of cables running into it and wants to explore.
Doctor: "Shout if you get in trouble."
River: "Don't worry, I'm quite the screamer. *disappears into tunnel* Now there's a spoiler for you."
*We get to see a lot more of the Silents, lurking about in old, old tunnels, making River forget and clutch her stomach.
*River gets all hot and bothered over a locked hatch in the tunnels and just has to see what's on the other side, which turns out to be something that looks very much like the TARDIS/ship thing from season five's episode, The Lodger. Something happens to Rory, involving the Silents and bright light. River turns around and Rory's gone.
*Back topside at the warehouse, we find out that Delaware got kicked out of the FBI for wanting to get married.
Amy: "Is that a crime?"
Delaware: "Yes."
Since when do you have to be single to be in the FBI?
*A bit later, Amy and the Doctor find Delaware stunned on the ground. Amy drops the bomb about being preggers, which it seems like an odd time for it to be urgent for her to tell him this. And then, a mysterious astronaut, possibly the same one who killed the Doctor in the beginning, shows up. Amy freaks out, grabs a gun and shoots, just in time to see the visor open to reveal the little girl. Dun dun duuuunnnnnn! And we get the closing credits.
This leaves a ton of questions. Was it the little girl that killed the Doctor or are there other scary astronaut types running around. My first thought was that it was River, since I, like a lot of other people, had the sense that River killed the Doctor, which crime gets her imprisoned in the Storm Cage. Regardless, how did the astronaut show up in the lake like that? The Doctor was very calm when going to face his death. He clearly knew who was in the suit and what was about to happen, and had no intention of fighting it.
Is the 1103 yr old Doctor really and truly dead? If he is, that spells the end of the show after Matt Smith, which seems unlikely, so there has to be some explanation. But Delaware rules out the idea of a clone, which means this is something that's going to have to be undone. How is the Doctor going to mess with his timeline without blowing up the Universe, or is that the event that triggers the TARDIS explosion in Big Bang?
Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel, for more thoughts and reactions.
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When Amy rushed to the restroom, saying she wasn't feeling well, the DH looked at me and said "She's pregnant." I was dubious because a pregnant companion would be a rather dicey proposition-- but low and behold, not five minutes later, she tells the Doctor she's pregnant.
The actor playing Nixon was not very Nixon-y looking. But he had the voice and gestures down pat.
The Doctor's car was awesome.
At a distant glance, I thought the aliens were Ood. From a distance, they look a lot like Ood.
I was in two minds over the episode-- clearly it's a set up for the entire story arc, but I think it was more fragmented than it needed to be, making it hard to keep track of what was going on. I know they can't give everything away at once, but just a tad more linearity would be welcome.
And: Rory and Amy are awesome together!
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I pay so little attention to cars, lol. It took me forever to figure out which car you were referring to, but yes, it is awesome.
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