Story 215 - The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon

In which Amy and Rory receive a blue envelope, which contains a map reference. They haven't seen the Doctor for some time, but have spotted him in references throughout history - even appearing in a Laurel & Hardy movie. They travel to Utah were they are reunited with him, soon to be joined by River Song, who also received a blue envelope. They all head for a nearby diner, where they learn that it has been some 200 years since the Doctor last saw them by his timeline. They then make for Lake Silencio, where they have a picnic. Amy sees a mysterious figure watching them, but forgets about it as soon as she turns way. They are interrupted by the sudden appearance of someone in a NASA spacesuit, emerging from the lake. The Doctor goes alone to speak to them, and the others are shocked to see the astronaut shoot the Doctor multiple times, preventing him from regenerating, before it returns to the lake. The Doctor is dead. An old man appears, who also has an envelope. He has brought a can of gasoline, with which to burn the Doctor's body. The man introduces himself as Canton Everett Delaware III. This is the last time he will see them - but they will see him again very soon...
Grief-stricken, they return to the diner, and notice another envelope on a table. The Doctor emerges from the rests room area where the TARDIS is parked, seemingly oblivious to what has just happened. They discover that this is a Doctor who has only recently seen them - one much younger than the one they saw killed. They determine not to tell him of what they saw. The Doctor wants to know about the mysterious envelopes, and decides that they need to visit 1969.

In the Spring of 1969, ex-secret agent Canton Everett Delaware III is summoned to the White House by President Richard Nixon. The President has been receiving strange phone calls every night from a child, who talks about monsters. Nixon wants Canton to investigate. The TARDIS has materialised in the Oval Office, silently and invisibly. The Doctor emerges and listens to one of the phone calls, and is suddenly spotted by security men. River, Amy and Rory are forced to reveal themselves to help him. The Doctor claims to be an expert from Scotland Yard, come to assist. Canton insists that the President listen to him. Anyone who can sneak into the Oval Office with a Police Box deserves a chance to be heard. The Doctor notes that the child mentioned the names of three past Presidents. Amy goes to the bathroom and sees a tall creature dressed in a black suit, with a mouthless, skull-like face. A woman in the room seems to forget about it as soon as she looks away from it. The creature kills her. Amy rushes from the room - and immediately forgets what she just witnessed.
The Doctor scans some maps and points out that they ought to go to Florida. Canton joins them in the TARDIS as they travel to a derelict factory building. The Doctor reveals that the President names referred to streets - and this is the only place in the US where three streets with those names intersect. They find the astronaut suit, and see that it has been wired up with alien technology. River and Rory go down into the sewers and find a network of tunnels which stretch for hundreds of miles. They see a number of the tall creatures - but immediately forget them as soon as they turn away. Upstairs, Amy tells the Doctor that she believes herself to be pregnant. Canton is knocked out, and the Doctor and Amy see the astronaut walking towards them. Amy seizes Canton's revolver and fires at the figure...

Three months later, the Doctor's companions are on the run from Canton and US security agents. They have started to mark their bodies with tally marks in an effort to remind themselves whenever they see one of the creatures. Amy and Rory are shot down, whilst River leaps from a New York skyscraper when cornered. The Doctor is being held captive at Area 51, about to be imprisoned in a cell made from dwarf star alloy. Once the cell is complete, he is left inside with Canton and body bags containing the corpses of Amy and Rory. They are still alive, however. Canton's hunt has been a deception, as the creatures are everywhere. Inside this impenetrable cell, they cannot spy on them. The invisible TARDIS is also here. The Doctor uses the TARDIS to first go back and rescue River from her fall, then its travels back to Florida and the site of the imminent launch of Apollo 11. Each of them has a tiny transmitter placed under the skin of their palm, which they can use to record encounters with the creatures. The astronaut they encountered at the derelict factory had contained a young girl, and Amy had merely damaged part of the suit when she fired. She and Canton are sent off to discover where the girl had come from - reasoning that it is likely an orphanage somewhere nearby. The Doctor is going to carry out some adjustments to the lunar landing module. He is arrested, but Amy and Rory have President Nixon come to Cape Kennedy with them in the TARDIS to bail him out of trouble.

Canton and Amy find an abandoned orphanage where the superintendent has clearly had his memory tampered with. Amy is shocked to find a child's room in which there are photographs of her holding a baby. She sees the face of a woman wearing an eye-patch appear briefly at a hatch in a door, which promptly vanishes, and is then abducted by the creatures. Canton is able to capture one of them, wounding it. It is transported to the dwarf star cell. Here it claims that if it were he it would kill all of its kind on sight. Canton records it saying this. The Doctor succeeds in discovering the location where Amy is being held captive and travels there with Rory and River. The creatures have a base which is similar to the time-ship which the Doctor had seen at Aickman Road, Colchester, when he briefly lodged with Craig Owens.
The creatures identify themselves as Silents, and they infiltrated Earth millennia ago, interfering with human development ever since. Anything they need - like a spacesuit - they push science and technology in that direction, manipulating behind the scenes. All over the world, people are watching TV, about to see Neil Armstrong become the first man to set foot on the moon. The Doctor edits Canton's edited recording into the live TV images - so everyone across the globe sees a Silent urging people to kill its kind on sight. Enraged, the Silents attack but River shoots them down. The creatures are forced to abandon the Earth. Back at the Oval Office, the Doctor suggests that President Nixon go on making recordings, supposedly as a safeguard. It is revealed that the reason Canton resigned was because he could not marry a person of colour, and it transpires that this is another man.
In the TARDIS, Amy tells the Doctor that her pregnancy was a false alarm. He is mystified, however, when the ship gives contradictory positive / negative results of a medical scan on her.
Meanwhile, in a New York alleyway, a tramp comes across the little girl. She claims to be dying, but says is fine with that. She begins to regenerate...

The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on April 23rd and 30th, 2011. The episodes mark the beginning of Series 6, and introduce a popular new monster to the programme - the Silents. They were inspired by stories of the mysterious Men in Black from UFO lore, with heads shaped like the "Grey" aliens who also feature in reports of alien encounters. The face was inspired by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's 1893 painting "The Scream".
Viewers would have immediately spotted a connection to the unresolved plot thread of "Silence will fall..." from the previous season.
The story is the latest celebrity historical in the sense that real life 37th President of the United States, Richard Milhouse Nixon, features. He's played, mainly for laughs, by Stuart Milligan. Nixon was brought down by the "Watergate Scandal", when people loyal to him staged a break-in of Democratic Party offices in the Watergate building, Washington DC, in June 1972. The burglars were arrested and money they had on them was traced back to Nixon's re-election campaign team. The subsequent cover-up was the real scandal, and Nixon was personally implicated thanks to recordings he made in the Oval Office of all conversations - referenced in the story by his recording of the child's phone calls, and the Doctor suggesting that he carry on keeping tape records. The film All The President's Men charts the involvement of journalist Woodward and Bernstein of The Washington Post in exposing the scandal, should you want to know more.

The story is also significant for its location work. The Doctor has visited the USA before, but the series had never filmed there - save for some plate shots being taken for the Daleks in Manhattan two-parter. The San Francisco-set 1996 TV Movie had been filmed in Vancouver, Canada. This time cast and crew spent a few days in Utah's Valley of the Gods, famous from hundreds of Westerns, and Arizona (location of the dam where Rory is shot).
We won't go into spoilers here (hint) so won't say anything yet about what really happened at Lake Silencio, who was in the astronaut suit, and who the little girl was.
Moffat had used the death of one of the main characters as a publicity hook prior to transmission of the first episode, and sadly a number of tabloids gave the game away by publishing screen grabs of the Doctor appearing to regenerate. What the BBC did manage to keep secret was the regeneration of the girl in the closing moments of the second part.
Viewers were left mystified by it all. It wasn't just the questions mentioned above, but also what was the mystery of Amy's yes / no pregnancy, how could she appear to have a baby in the photographs, and who was the enigmatic lady with the eye-patch (played by Frances Barber) who appeared at the hatch then promptly vanished again? Moffat also insisted that there was no trickery to the future Doctor's death. He really was killed.

Amy and Rory's relationship is developed further. We learn that, despite the universe being rebooted, Rory still has some memories of the time he was an Auton duplicate. Amy feels more comfortable telling the Doctor about her pregnancy than she does her husband. Whilst held captive, Rory hears Amy through the transmitter in her hand - and thinks she is more in love with the Doctor than with him. It turns out that she was really describing him, rather than the Doctor, and she only told the Time Lord first as she was worried about how travelling in the TARDIS might affect a pregnancy, and didn't want to concern him until she was reassured herself.
We've mentioned a couple of the guest artists, but the main one - fulfilling a companion role for this story - is Mark Sheppard as Canton.The actor's father, William Morgan Sheppard, plays his older self. Sheppard Jnr has appeared in a number of genre productions - having featured as a regular in 70 episodes of the series Supernatural as the demon Crowley. He was the arsonist killer in the appropriately titled episode "Fire" in The X-Files first season, and has appeared in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. He also guest starred in a number of episodes of the rebooted  Battlestar Galactica.

The only other guest artist of note is Kerry Shale, who plays the orphanage superintendent, Renfrew - the name supposedly inspired by the character of Renfield in Dracula.
The girl is played by Sydney Wade, whilst the main Silent actor is Marnix Van Den Broeke, who is 6' 7" in height (2 metres in new money). Wade had just played Alex Kingston's daughter in the supernatural drama Marchlands.
The story had a short prequel available before transmission of the first episode - scenes in the Oval Office of Nixon listening to one of the phone calls in which the child claims that there are monsters everywhere, and we see a Silent, out of focus, in the background.
Overall, a very good start to the new season. It's by Steven Moffat, and the it's the first story, so naturally there are far more questions than answers. The Silents make for an impressive new monster, and Sheppard makes for a very good temporary companion. All the regulars are well served.
Things you might like to know:

• There was an on screen dedication to Elisabeth Sladen on The Impossible Astronaut. She passed away only a few days before transmission.
• Day of the Moon had the working title "Look Behind You". The title of the first episode was suggested by one of Moffat's sons.
• It is implied that the statues on Easter Island were fashioned after the Doctor's image.
• The Doctor gives his age as 909 here, with the older version being 1103.
• The Doctor is seen with a beard for only the second time ever. The Second Doctor was seen at times to grow his sideburns quite long, and Ten often sported stubble, but none of the earlier Doctors ever sported facial hair. The first time we saw a full beard was when the Fourth Doctor was greatly aged by the Tachyon Generator in The Leisure Hive.
• As Amy and Rory spot references to the Doctor throughout history we see him failing to escape from a German POW camp in WWII (the 'old tunnelling into the Commandant's office' joke); encounter an enraged King Charles II after getting naked to have his portrait painted by one of his mistresses; and hear of how he then fled the Tower of London in a balloon. 
• The Laurel & Hardy clip had earlier been used to digitally superimpose someone, when Billy Crystal hosted the Academy Awards in 1992. He was seen dancing in the same scene from The Flying Deuces. Whatever happened to Billy Crystal?
• The director of this story was Toby Haynes. He had also directed the final two episodes of Series 5, plus the intervening Christmas Special - making him the first person to direct five consecutively broadcast episodes of the show.
• Star Trek is mentioned, as the lady in the White House bathroom - Joy - asks the Silent if he is wearing a Star Trek mask.
• Space: 1999 is also referenced, when the Doctor talks about "Space: 1969".
• The Doctor claims to be a specialist from Scotland Yard. UNIT is already set up in 1969, so it is odd he doesn't mention them instead.
• The backstory for the Silents seems to contradict a couple of other stories where aliens are supposed to have influenced our development. Were Azal the Daemon or Scaroth of the Jagaroth aware of them? Technically they are supposed to have been on Earth, all over the planet, during the events of every story set on Earth up to 1969. They should therefore have had multiple chances of killing the Doctor before the events of Series 6.
• We will later discover that an older Amy and Rory are living in New York City during the events seen here.
• The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones are in London during this period, cut off from the TARDIS because of the Weeping Angels (Blink).
• And shouldn't the TARDIS be unable to visit New York in 1969, if events in the 1930's with the Angels have caused it to become a temporal no-go area for the ship.