Doctor Who S32E2, "Day of the Moon" [spoilers]

[Broomstick]

Nixon was also an advocate of universal healthcare - really, despite having a reputation as an arch-conservative, by today's standards he's a flaming liberal, on many issues far to the left of even today's Democrats. Alas, the Watergate scandal pushed the healthcare proposal off the rails - wonder how things would have been different if Nixon had finished his term without that scandal?

That, and the business with the two security guys at NASA, getting all chatty and personal, was supposedly something he did really well back in the day. He was also known for wanting "Hail to the Chief" played whenever he entered a room - stands out most when he exits the Prison Cube in Area 51, that's definitely "Hail to the Chief" playing.

Nixon was reviled for many years after Watergate, and certainly never held another elected office again, but his reputation was considerably redeemed by the time of his death. Americans were much more willing to recognize his positive contributions alongside his serious faults.

I guess I got a bit of a kick out this episode because I can actually remember those times.

[NecronLord]

By the way, i liked the bit at the end with Canton and Nixon. Nixon actually was in favor of civil rights (tough he downplayed that a lot for political reasons) IIRC, and he initially assumed that Canton wanted to marry a black woman and wanted to help him. Nice little bit of historical accuracy.
And i also liked that Nixon did NOT approve of Canton being gay - everything else would have been too unrealistic. Ignoring that people in earlier days were bigots is it's own kind of bigotry, i'm glad they did not do that.

I don't think it's that he disliked Canton being gay, I thought the expression on his face was from imagining the shitstorm that would ensue from his trying to get a gay man married and back in the FBI.

[Serafina]

By the way, i liked the bit at the end with Canton and Nixon. Nixon actually was in favor of civil rights (tough he downplayed that a lot for political reasons) IIRC, and he initially assumed that Canton wanted to marry a black woman and wanted to help him. Nice little bit of historical accuracy.
And i also liked that Nixon did NOT approve of Canton being gay - everything else would have been too unrealistic. Ignoring that people in earlier days were bigots is it's own kind of bigotry, i'm glad they did not do that.

I don't think it's that he disliked Canton being gay, I thought the expression on his face was from imagining the shitstorm that would ensue from his trying to get a gay man married and back in the FBI.

Hm, that's also a possibility. Which is still okay, but i generally like it when bigotries are portrayed realistically (everything else is just whitewashing) and i have a very hard time imagining Nixon as gay-friendly.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Yeah, I didn't get an 'OMG ur GAY!' vibe so much as a 'Lets not get crazy here, you only saved the planet' feeling.

[Serafina]

Yeah, I didn't get an 'OMG ur GAY!' vibe so much as a 'Lets not get crazy here, you only saved the planet' feeling.

Well, i re-watched the whole thing and tend to agree.

And because those scenes were right afterwards:

-Rivers reaction when the Doctor leaves her is one of the things i love about her. Her story (two lovers meeting in the wrong order in time) is really unique, i just love it. A very sad scene tough - and those who dislike her will probably fondly remember it, because we'll likely to those parts where she'll know less and less about the Doctor and will get less annoying in their eyes.

-I love the sense of wonder the little girl has when she is regenerating. Apparently she knew that she could do that, but had no idea what exactly would happen. Very good characterization if that carries on, and it might tell us a lot about Time Lords (if she is in fact a Time Lady). Either way, the scene is really heartwarming to me

[Broomstick]

You have to understand that in the terms of the day "gay friendly", if such a term even existed, would have had a very different meaning than today. Nixon was a highly tolerant man of his era but there was no way he could publicly associate with a known homosexual. I'm serious, gays and lesbians were as reviled as pedophiles are today. Nixon not recoiling in horror at Canton's revelation would, in fact, have been a mark of unusual tolerance at the time. Canton realizing that there was no way in hell Nixon could have enough pull to enable a gay marriage is also true to the times depicted. At the time, if they were very discreet, and very lucky, gay men could maintain a relationship but it was the ultimate game of "don't ask, don't tell" - if they were outed they could easily become the target of vigilantes intent on protecting their children from what they perceived as dangerous perverts who "can't reproduce so they recruit" (I heard that often throughout the 1970's, even).

Yes, in 1969 it was easier to send a man to the Moon than to have the public accept a homosexual.

All of which makes me wonder about Canton's life between 1969 and 2011, when he's an old man on a beach in Utah seeing all those people for the last time, even as they meet him for the first time.

[dragon]

not a bad start to the season, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with the child though.
As for the green thing the doctor fires it could just be the doctors version of a taser.

[NecronLord]

Regarding the sonic screwdriver, given that it was destroyed in the Christmas Special, perhaps he built a new one with a weapon in it? Seems unlikely... but...

When I was watching it the impression I got was that the screwdriver was disrupting that 'power build up' thing the Silence do, but that seems unlikely given the screenshots.

Still, it's kind of stupid that they'd need to orchestrate a grand conspiracy to make the Moon landing just so they can get the tech to make a friggin's space suit, when they can also blow up the universe.

You think in such three dimensional terms.

That could have been the Silence from literally a trillion years later in their history.

Just because they're not up to much this time doesn't mean they never will be.

Speculation Time: The Silence say Amy 'will bring the silence, but your part is almost over' to me that implies that the kid is in some way related to the silence, perhaps even is one, in some way.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah, I thought it was possible that future Silents could arm the paleo-Silents in 1969. This would be cool, a temporal-capable enemy capable of skirmishing through time and space with the Doctor aside from the Daleks, and with a nifty optical illusion trick, and with a clever multi-episode arcing scheme.

The Doctor did disable and break Silurian sonic weaponry last season using his screwdriver. Maybe his screwdriver also disabled and broke Silent weaponry (or reflect their pew-pews back at them), except their weapons are also part of their bodies, so...

[2000AD]

Thanks for the pics, yes, that's definitely the sonic screwdriver zapping someone.

Of course, any screwdriver may be used as an improvised weapon, for stabbing or hitting someone with the handle, so I'll just explain it to myself as an extension of that sort of improvised weapon concept. It is unusual for the Doctor to engage in direct violence, those he has done so in the past when necessary.

It really highlights the differences between 10 and 11. 10 Abhorred violence, frequently called out humans for being violent, going so far as slamming hand-10 for wiping out the Daleks, despite them being about to destroy all of reality a few minutes earlier.
11 gets in on the fight and encourages humans to "kill on sight" some aliens.

Wild Mass Guessing time:
River said that in the future whole armies would flee at the mere mention of the Doctor's name.
Pandorica showed just how scared of The Doctor a lot of races are.
11 is becoming more accepting of violence.
Perhaps the reason armies in the future shit themselves is not because of The Doctor's current reputation of being someone who throws a spanner in evil plans, but because he goes Family of Blood on people at the drop of a hat. I'm talking full on 'no more mister nice guy', 'no second chances', 'the Time Lord victorious', if he thinks your a bad guy he will fuck you up just because he can.
That's why he willingly went to his death (or perhaps he thought his next regen) with the astronaught, something happened that made him realise what he'd become and he decided to stop it.
Also may explain River a little, a more warlike Doctor would be more than willing to accept a more aggressive companion. Given the Daleks reaction to her name dropping herself in the 2nd part of the Pandorica finale maybe she's even more aggressive in her past / Doctor's future, she is in prison for murder after all.
That might be another twist to their meeting each other backwards plot. The Doctor gets more violent each time he meets her and she get's more passive as each time she meets him from her perspective as he's getting closer and closer to the almost pacifistic 10 each time.

Ok, that's enogh random speculation for one post.

[Serafina]

You have to understand that in the terms of the day "gay friendly", if such a term even existed, would have had a very different meaning than today. Nixon was a highly tolerant man of his era but there was no way he could publicly associate with a known homosexual. I'm serious, gays and lesbians were as reviled as pedophiles are today. Nixon not recoiling in horror at Canton's revelation would, in fact, have been a mark of unusual tolerance at the time. Canton realizing that there was no way in hell Nixon could have enough pull to enable a gay marriage is also true to the times depicted. At the time, if they were very discreet, and very lucky, gay men could maintain a relationship but it was the ultimate game of "don't ask, don't tell" - if they were outed they could easily become the target of vigilantes intent on protecting their children from what they perceived as dangerous perverts who "can't reproduce so they recruit" (I heard that often throughout the 1970's, even).

Yes, in 1969 it was easier to send a man to the Moon than to have the public accept a homosexual.

All of which makes me wonder about Canton's life between 1969 and 2011, when he's an old man on a beach in Utah seeing all those people for the last time, even as they meet him for the first time.

I' quite aware of that (i was at a gay-lesbian generational meeting just this last friday).
Which is why i read Nixons reaction worse than it actually was - i fully expected him to be disgusted, simply because that's the reaction i would have expected from almost anyone in those days.

Also, i sigged the "easier to send a man to the moon"-part. Thanks for that


By the way, doesn't this make Canton the first major gay character in Doctor Who (Captain Jack aside, who's really just omnisexual)? We had the occasional gay or lesbian minor character, but i don't recall any gay major character.

[Revy]

Hold on, I'm confused. If River and the Doctor keep meeting in reverse, (right? That's what she claims?) then it starts with the Doctor not knowing her, and River completely knowing him. Then as it goes on, it'll end up with the Doctor knowing her completely, and her not knowing him at all.

That's what they're saying right?

... so how is it then, if that's the sequence they are going for, that in the Forest of the Dead episode she tells us that when she last saw the Doctor, he pretty much said goodbye and gave her a sonic screwdriver? That doesn't make any sense.

If the reverse meeting order is what is happening, then the Doctor would have to have given River that screwdriver *already* by now. As it stand however, he's eventually going to meet her and she will have no clue who he is. So in order for her to get that screwdriver, they will have to *break* the reverse meeting order sequence they insist is going on.

"Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time we've been together, you knew I was coming here. The last time I saw you, the real you, the future you, I mean - you turned up on my doorstep, with a new haircut and a suit. You took me to Darillium to see the singing towers. Oh, what a night that was! The towers sang and you cried. You wouldn't tell me why, but I suppose you knew it was time. My time. Time to come to the Library. You even gave me your screwdriver - that should've been a clue."

... see? It makes no sense. Either I'm understanding it all wrong, or at some point River will meet the Doctor just before she goes to the Library, get a screwdriver from him, and still know who he is. But if everytime we see her she remembers less and less, and they are going in opposite directions ... it cant work, can it? Argh! Will someone explain this to me? I cant wrap my head around it.

[DaveJB]

The most logical explanation I can think of is that River had an offscreen meeting with the Tenth Doctor at some point between the library encounter and his regeneration, and that was when he gave her the sonic screwdriver.

[Broomstick]

The "meet in reverse order" thing is probably not exact - hence the need for them to "synch" their diaries when they met in "Impossible Astronaut"

[Crazedwraith]

That's always puzzled me as well. The Screwdriver she had was an updated version of Ten's. With blue and red settings and an extra helping of greebles.

But Ten's has been destroyed and replaced with Eleven's green, extendomatic one.

But I thought the entire that River and the Doctor were going to exact opposite way was an oversimplification of the concept. If she really needed her diary to sync up it should be a lot more random than that.

Besides there's no law that says they meet up in the exact opposite order without any deviation. After all, River met the 1100 year old eleven and then the 907 year old version right after each other. Something similar happened to get the screw driver to her.

[Big Orange]

It really highlights the differences between 10 and 11. 10 Abhorred violence, frequently called out humans for being violent, going so far as slamming hand-10 for wiping out the Daleks, despite them being about to destroy all of reality a few minutes earlier.
11 gets in on the fight and encourages humans to "kill on sight" some aliens.

Ten's stance of trying to avoid mass bloodshed was established in "The Christmas Invasion" where he chided then deposed the incumbant PM for shooting down the Sycorax ship, he did not go out of his way to kill alien foes: he gave a warning to the Racnoss Empress, even offering safe passage to her and her brood - but no - the arrogant bitch blithely turned down the Doctor's offer of mercy and set about to turn everybody within the M25 into a first course meal, so he had no other choice but to seal the shaft with bomblets.

He disguised himself as a teacher in "Human Nature"-"The Family of Blood" so that the Family would fruitlessly search across the Universe for him and die of natural causes, giving them a way out - but no - they tracked him down and killed dozens of innocent people in the process; he snapped and gave them particularily brutal punishments, in the process giving them the immortality that they craved.

But he had a funny attitude towards veterans of the Time War who were mentally wrecked though, like Caan and the Master, but had no qualms of banishing the Time Lords under a war wacky Rassilon back into the Time War, though all that will likely be properly resolved in the 50th anniversary...

Moffat is really shaking up the show's formula isn't he? I prefered the first episode to the concluding part, where it was all got a bit more messy and rather silly with River Song spinning around shooting the Silents, but since there's so many plot strands and unanswered questions we can't really judge the first two episodes properly until S6 concludes. I'll still give a "4" score though, since a lot of the plot strands introduced in S5 are actually going somewhere and there's a proper sense of novelty in this show now that's been somewhat lacking since Christopher Eccleston's tenure way back in 2005.

However Steven Moffat is getting into serious danger of over cooking things with the wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimey stuff, making the show less accessable to casual viewers than before under the stewardship of nerd rage magnet Russell T. Davies, since this very elaborate two parter has a lot more to take in than in "Rose" and "Smith & Jones", that's for sure, or even in Moffat's "The Eleventh Hour". But I really liked Canton Everett Delaware III, with Mark Sheppard not playing a badguy for once, I liked his clever ploy in getting him and the team away from the Silence.

And I get the impression the Silence were never really around before the 11th Doctor and are "recent" from his perspective. Sure they've established themselves on Earth for many millennia, but they're a time travelling species and can change the timeline themselves to suit their needs, especially with very few to no Time Lords around and with TARDISes of their own. And the unintentionally self-inflicted pogrom bothers me not because of the moral implications (I think most of the Silence got away) but because of the indirect damage inflicted (like bullets in the walls of the Oval Office to start with) and the people killed by Silents defending themselves from the human reprisals.

And forget about the little girl with the RTD style regeneration powers, what about tha batty lady with the iron eyepatch that was peering through a slot in the doorway to the room the girl astronaut was in?

[Revy]

Yeah, okay, I'd be fine with that. In fact I was fine with it until these recent episodes. I always figured that they simply met in a random order. So it didn't bother me.

But the fact that they are hitting us over the head with this "Oh tragedy! Every time we meet I know you less and less!" nonsense, and River is even giving us *speeches* about how terrible it is for her because of this reverse meeting sequence, that's why I call bs on it.

If your melodrama requires them to be meeting in reverse, but your own continuity contradicts that, sort out what's actually going! Or stop trying to milk sympathy for River. Sheesh, they couldn't even properly kill her off in the first place, and we know she's going to get at least one last proper meeting with him where they both know each other very well before the end. Trying to tug at my heartstrings or whatever this way is just bugging me, and I already don't like her.

[Crazedwraith]

No, I totally agree you, Revy. Though the pathos at the end of this episode was better than her speech in The Impossible Astronaut, which was just cheesy and 'prescient'

[Raxmei]

The way I see it, they do more or less meet in reverse order for almost every meeting, then the Doctor turns around and backs up over River's timeline for their goodbyes. First he goes to River as described in Silence in the Library then he goes to die in The Impossible Astronaut.

[Dahak]

I liked the overall episode very much, even though the ending left me a bit puzzled. On a plus side, I got my bf to watch it with me and he didn't fall asleep, which is a good thing.
What I found annoying was that the whole situation they built up at the end of the previous episode is not really addressed except a few flashbacks. I was hoping on a bit more what happened there.

[Jaepheth]

Too much story was glossed over at the start. This should have been a 3 part story.

Other than that, I liked it. Quite entertaining.

[Themightytom]

I interpreted River's response his kiss as foreshadowing Silence in the Library, Eleven can go back and give her the pep talk any time, and i imagine, it would be towards the end of this season, after he HISMELF knows her well enough to do this. After the two of them have "synched" and he remembers her without spoilers, and vice versa. I am PRETTY sure he can pull off a look a like sonic screwdriver pretty easily.

I guess it would be interesting to see eleven and ten working together on this, maybe a retcon of silence in the library A La trouble with tribbles.

I wasn't really offended by her prowess with the laser gun, she's jsut the Tin Dog. K-9 shot things all the time, and was ALSO frequently humping the doctor's leg.

The dead Eleven could be a time clone, left over artifact from recreating the universe, or left over portion of his pinkey for all we know. it is worth pointing out that Prisoner 0 knew about the Silents, suggesting a transdimensional awareness, as the Silents were presumably driven from Earth by the time prisoner 0 was messing around.

I kind of like the little girl being the offspring of the Doctor and Amy, though, the explanation Amy and the Doctor gave Rory would seem really bullshit considering the guy LITERALLY "guarded her box" for millenia.

Ahhh I'm inappropriate.

Anyway evidence to the contrary, it would have been a neater package to have the child be the daughter of River Song and the Doctor since She Knows His Name And Is Special for some reason. i really don't want to entertain the notion that River is his daughter cause... I mean... that kiss was Empire Strikes Back level awkward in that case, and she flirts with him a lot. River wouldn't have grown up in the Silent's care anyway and "Remembered the doctor from when she was young" because she seemed pretty ignorant of nearly getting shot in the face by Amy Pond, kidnapped by Silents, etc

I feel like they were raising the little Time Lord Girl, to pilot their faux TARDIS. I will rewatch "The Lodger" for clues..

Jenny could be the mother, and also the master might have a past incarnation kicking around. I find the child's cavalier attitude about regenerating to be interesting.

Does Rory still have his fricking gun finger or not? Why the hell is he so damn helpless?

[Serafina]

That's a good point by the way - so far we have never seen the Silence actually USE the fakeTARDIS for timetravel (or anything, really). The one we saw in "The Lodger" had crashed - it might have been an attempt to pilot it that simply failed. The ones we saw in this two-parter were never piloted anywhere at all.

Of course we have to explain somehow how the Silence made the TARDIS explode. Well, we'll find out i suppose.

[Crazedwraith]

Rory doesn't have his gun hand. He's no longer an auton. When the universe reset he became flesh and blood again. He still has the memories though. Although he implied their compartmentalised away in his brain so he doesn't remember it all, all the time. Which is a good thing, otherwise he'd probably be a bit loopy.

[The Romulan Republic]

Rory doesn't have his gun hand. He's no longer an auton. When the universe reset he became flesh and blood again. He still has the memories though. Although he implied their compartmentalised away in his brain so he doesn't remember it all, all the time. Which is a good thing, otherwise he'd probably be a bit loopy.

Which I find pretty fascinating, as it means that in terms of memories, Rory is now older than the Doctor.