Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-04-26 03:38 am
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-04-26 03:38 am
Entry tags:
Thoughts/speculation on 'The Impossible Astronaut'
In short? Loved it, can't wait for more. Moffat, you terrible wonderful man.
- So, the big one: the Doctor's death. I am perfectly willing to take the script at its word that this is a true, final death and that that really was the Doctor. I am also not for a moment willing to believe that this is it forever for the Doctor as a character--for one thing, the BBC would have roasted Moffat alive. So there's an out, an asterisk, a way for some version of the Doctor to carry on. We don't have nearly enough information to speculate on exactly what that is, but Moffat has talked in interviews about the Doctor becoming a well-known figure in-universe, about how the series has slowly started to acknowledge that he can't do all the things he does without becoming a legendary cosmic badass, and that Moffat's going to put an end to that somehow or another.
I doubt it will be anything as unsubtle as a big red reset button on RTD continuity, but I do suspect that just as Ten's godlike-power/martyrdom issues started small and unacknowledged and slowly got bigger and bigger until they exploded, Eleven's Chuck Norris complex will get increasingly prominent until it explodes. All the "look me up"/"one thing you never put in a trap"/"let somebody else go first"/"fear me, I've killed all of them" hubris is building and building, and I suspect that however Moffat chooses to write around Eleven's death, what it means is that the Doctor who writes himself into history books is dead and gone. Whatever version of the Doctor ends up going on from here will be smaller, more inconspicuous, a footnote around the margins of history instead of a giant chapter entitled "ONCOMING STORM" in big letters.
- So who's in the astronaut suit by the lake? And who's the little girl in the suit in Florida?
Least plausible theory (but still possible) is that the little girl in the suit is baby River Song, she's also the one who kills the Doctor by the lake, and that's what lands her in the Stormcage. A little too obvious, a little too messy: why lock her up as an adult woman for something she did as a terrified child who may or may not have been in control of the suit? Still possible if Moff can tighten up issues like that.
Actually I'm leaning towards thinking that the little girl in the suit in Florida is one of the 'lures' we saw in The Lodger. Remember the holograms/automata/whatever that lured people into the wonky pseudo-TARDIS by calling for help? The girl in the suit acts an awful lot like one of those--seeks people out to get them to come after her, doesn't interact except to reiterate her plea. And what is she doing? Luring people into a trap with a call for help, a trap that involves a pseudo-TARDIS just like the one in The Lodger. It would also resolve the cliffhanger quickly and neatly: Amy shooting at the little girl won't have any effect if the girl is a hologram.
As for who's in the suit by the lake, anyone's guess. I would bet good money that they got there via the TARDIS materializing at the bottom of the lake. In all likelihood there are dramatic plotty shenanigans on the moon and the TARDIS goes from there to the lake bottom with someone in an astronaut suit. At this point I am about evenly split between it being some surviving version of the Doctor, and it being an adult River Song who then lands in the Stormcage for killing him.
- The Silence! Creepy motherfuckers. Who are they? How do they work? What do they want? Why are they trying to build a TARDIS? What do they have to do with the real TARDIS exploding in s5?
Someone else noticed that the one in the bathroom with Amy briefly grew a mouth and was able to speak after killing Joy, but only briefly. Are they like the weeping angels where the very thing that makes them terrifying is a double-edged sword? The angels' survival mechanism makes them the loneliest creatures in the universe; maybe the Silence can only communicate by consuming the voice/memories/identity of others.
Moffat has freaking outdone himself here; he's admitted to being fond of "the monster has been in the room with you the whole time" as a failsafe way to scare the audience shitless, but he keeps upping the stakes. The difference between "the tape ran out thirty seconds ago, so why is there still a kid calling for his mummy?" and "the Silence have been hanging out with us right in the open for centuries and we never remembered them" is kind of like the difference between getting Rickrolled by some punk on the internet and having Rick Astley himself perform in the Thanksgiving Day parade. And yes, he likes to reuse tricks and has a bunch of psychological tics that show up again and again, but I don't think it's got to the point of predictability yet.
- River fucking Song, why so amazing. Bang-up job with the monologue in the tunnels, though I was slightly annoyed by the suggestion that she has no life outside the Doctor. Okay, the show is Doctor Who, fair enough that the times we see her onscreen will be in plots having to do with him, but what's the point of setting up a character so explicitly designed to be a match for him if you're going to deny her her own offscreen stories? He does plenty of things that have fuckall to do with River Song; they aren't really on equal footing if she doesn't have plenty of exploits that have fuckall to do with the Doctor.
But I will reserve judgment there until we know her whole story, because I have a feeling that what we don't know there is key to interpreting her character. And anyway, aside from that particular raised eyebrow I fucking love River. And it would be hilarious (though increasingly unlikely) if she turned out to be the TARDIS/the Master/some alt version of the Doctor, or really anything else that would cast their flirting in a different and super-awkward light.
- Amy's pregnancy. I don't even know. I haven't watched the Confidential yet but apparently Word of God is treating it as something real, not just something the Silence have planted in her brain. The episode itself is pretty ambiguous: there are little things strung throughout the episode that made me think about it before any of the sledgehammer hints started, but each of the sledgehammer hints is somehow undermined. Older Doctor makes a comment about Amy's weight, but he's presumably been through this whole sequence of events as his younger self and could just be ribbing her. Amy is sick, but then River is also sick right after a Silence mindwipe. Assuming she really is preggers, I'm guessing that (a) she only blurted it out because she knew she had SOMETHING to tell the Doctor but the Silence mindfuckery was preventing her from spilling either of the bigger secrets she had, and (b) there might be some plot relating to the Silence and their stomachache powarz and Amy's baby (PLEASE GOD LET IT NOT BE IN THE VEIN OF 'ALIEN'), but it will be at least partly resolved within the space of the two-parter.
All in all? MOAR. WANT MOAR. Saturday cannot come fast enough.
- So, the big one: the Doctor's death. I am perfectly willing to take the script at its word that this is a true, final death and that that really was the Doctor. I am also not for a moment willing to believe that this is it forever for the Doctor as a character--for one thing, the BBC would have roasted Moffat alive. So there's an out, an asterisk, a way for some version of the Doctor to carry on. We don't have nearly enough information to speculate on exactly what that is, but Moffat has talked in interviews about the Doctor becoming a well-known figure in-universe, about how the series has slowly started to acknowledge that he can't do all the things he does without becoming a legendary cosmic badass, and that Moffat's going to put an end to that somehow or another.
I doubt it will be anything as unsubtle as a big red reset button on RTD continuity, but I do suspect that just as Ten's godlike-power/martyrdom issues started small and unacknowledged and slowly got bigger and bigger until they exploded, Eleven's Chuck Norris complex will get increasingly prominent until it explodes. All the "look me up"/"one thing you never put in a trap"/"let somebody else go first"/"fear me, I've killed all of them" hubris is building and building, and I suspect that however Moffat chooses to write around Eleven's death, what it means is that the Doctor who writes himself into history books is dead and gone. Whatever version of the Doctor ends up going on from here will be smaller, more inconspicuous, a footnote around the margins of history instead of a giant chapter entitled "ONCOMING STORM" in big letters.
- So who's in the astronaut suit by the lake? And who's the little girl in the suit in Florida?
Least plausible theory (but still possible) is that the little girl in the suit is baby River Song, she's also the one who kills the Doctor by the lake, and that's what lands her in the Stormcage. A little too obvious, a little too messy: why lock her up as an adult woman for something she did as a terrified child who may or may not have been in control of the suit? Still possible if Moff can tighten up issues like that.
Actually I'm leaning towards thinking that the little girl in the suit in Florida is one of the 'lures' we saw in The Lodger. Remember the holograms/automata/whatever that lured people into the wonky pseudo-TARDIS by calling for help? The girl in the suit acts an awful lot like one of those--seeks people out to get them to come after her, doesn't interact except to reiterate her plea. And what is she doing? Luring people into a trap with a call for help, a trap that involves a pseudo-TARDIS just like the one in The Lodger. It would also resolve the cliffhanger quickly and neatly: Amy shooting at the little girl won't have any effect if the girl is a hologram.
As for who's in the suit by the lake, anyone's guess. I would bet good money that they got there via the TARDIS materializing at the bottom of the lake. In all likelihood there are dramatic plotty shenanigans on the moon and the TARDIS goes from there to the lake bottom with someone in an astronaut suit. At this point I am about evenly split between it being some surviving version of the Doctor, and it being an adult River Song who then lands in the Stormcage for killing him.
- The Silence! Creepy motherfuckers. Who are they? How do they work? What do they want? Why are they trying to build a TARDIS? What do they have to do with the real TARDIS exploding in s5?
Someone else noticed that the one in the bathroom with Amy briefly grew a mouth and was able to speak after killing Joy, but only briefly. Are they like the weeping angels where the very thing that makes them terrifying is a double-edged sword? The angels' survival mechanism makes them the loneliest creatures in the universe; maybe the Silence can only communicate by consuming the voice/memories/identity of others.
Moffat has freaking outdone himself here; he's admitted to being fond of "the monster has been in the room with you the whole time" as a failsafe way to scare the audience shitless, but he keeps upping the stakes. The difference between "the tape ran out thirty seconds ago, so why is there still a kid calling for his mummy?" and "the Silence have been hanging out with us right in the open for centuries and we never remembered them" is kind of like the difference between getting Rickrolled by some punk on the internet and having Rick Astley himself perform in the Thanksgiving Day parade. And yes, he likes to reuse tricks and has a bunch of psychological tics that show up again and again, but I don't think it's got to the point of predictability yet.
- River fucking Song, why so amazing. Bang-up job with the monologue in the tunnels, though I was slightly annoyed by the suggestion that she has no life outside the Doctor. Okay, the show is Doctor Who, fair enough that the times we see her onscreen will be in plots having to do with him, but what's the point of setting up a character so explicitly designed to be a match for him if you're going to deny her her own offscreen stories? He does plenty of things that have fuckall to do with River Song; they aren't really on equal footing if she doesn't have plenty of exploits that have fuckall to do with the Doctor.
But I will reserve judgment there until we know her whole story, because I have a feeling that what we don't know there is key to interpreting her character. And anyway, aside from that particular raised eyebrow I fucking love River. And it would be hilarious (though increasingly unlikely) if she turned out to be the TARDIS/the Master/some alt version of the Doctor, or really anything else that would cast their flirting in a different and super-awkward light.
- Amy's pregnancy. I don't even know. I haven't watched the Confidential yet but apparently Word of God is treating it as something real, not just something the Silence have planted in her brain. The episode itself is pretty ambiguous: there are little things strung throughout the episode that made me think about it before any of the sledgehammer hints started, but each of the sledgehammer hints is somehow undermined. Older Doctor makes a comment about Amy's weight, but he's presumably been through this whole sequence of events as his younger self and could just be ribbing her. Amy is sick, but then River is also sick right after a Silence mindwipe. Assuming she really is preggers, I'm guessing that (a) she only blurted it out because she knew she had SOMETHING to tell the Doctor but the Silence mindfuckery was preventing her from spilling either of the bigger secrets she had, and (b) there might be some plot relating to the Silence and their stomachache powarz and Amy's baby (PLEASE GOD LET IT NOT BE IN THE VEIN OF 'ALIEN'), but it will be at least partly resolved within the space of the two-parter.
All in all? MOAR. WANT MOAR. Saturday cannot come fast enough.