#182; Doctor Who Watch – The Impossible Astronaut

Finally, Doctor Who is back. After the months of silence following the Christmas episode minus a quick pop in for Comic Relief, we’re back with a new series and it was quite a way to kick things off with almost instantly the death of the Doctor it seems. Uhh, ok then. But this was what kicked off an admittedly confusing episode upon the initial watch as I got very overwhelmed by trying to work out what the hell was actually going on, but on second watch with a clearer mind and just having more time to observe the episode it was actually quite the episode to kick off the new series of Doctor Who.

First off, this was not your usual happy go lucky introduction to the new series whatsoever, if anything it was the polar opposite. The story was quite dark in it’s nature, almost political in it’s use of Richard Nixon’s infamous phone tapping ways of the past and harking back to that revolutionary time of man reaching the moon in 1969 but it was a pretty unique way for Doctor Who to return to say the least. The Doctor seems to have gotten a bit more mature in his ways too, not so clumsy or silly in his ways or so he seemed but more thoughtful, aged, almost as if he was a young man again reaching manhood and growing up. You can make your mind up whether or not this related to just the Doctor or Matt Smith as the Doctor…

Although it took me two watches to properly get my head around it all though it was nice to have a complex story with no festivities or charity silliness getting in the way but instead intrigue, mystery, suspense and of course that always present confusion. The initial negative confusion was replaced by good confusion though – who was that spaceman? (Later answered, or so we think…) Why was the little girl in a derelict building like that? Why was she in the space suit at the end? What’s with Amy’s pregnancy? How relevant will it be to the story arc? Finally, the biggest question for me coming out of this episode – What are the Silence going to do with the Doctor?

Is he smiling? I think he's smiling.

God, how creepy are the Silence? The concept alone of a monster who you simply forget about as you stare away from their presence is a pretty creepy enough idea but it seems Mr Moffat has found his new ‘Weeping Angels’. Quite right too, these bad boys freaked me out big time just as the Angels did on their original debut! It’s nice to have a new enemy of the Doctor too to observe and try to understand but I am happy to stand away from these guys as far away as possible. Furthermore, in terms of understanding things in the show, River Song returning added more wonder to her role within the Doctor’s life as well as her ever-seemingly-wife relationship that is still shrounded in mystery continues to be played upon and hinted at. We’ll know soon enough, I’m sure, but part of me does think they could have her popping up less and just added more to the suspense. At one point we had 4 companions in the TARDIS and it kind of felt like overkill, you know? I’m not totally over the idea of Rory, Amy and River accompanying the Doctor but we’ll see how it plays out.

As a story though it was what Moffat tends to do best – just totally twist things up as much as possible but explain it progressively so it starts to open up and make sense. This is only Part 1 and there’s so much more to answer as I mentioned earlier in this post so whilst I’m still kind of surprised at how dark of an opening episode it was, watching it again gave me a far greater appreciation of how good it was and how much we have to look forward to in this series.

Pros:
+ Exciting, shocking, gripping, you name it!
+ Doctor Who is back, isn’t that enough?!
+ Some fab little one liners that kept coming out from various characters
+ The Silence are bloody scary
+ Mr Moffat knows how to perfectly mess with our minds 

Cons:
-…The Silence are bloody scary!
- Storyline was pretty confusing at times but eventually started to even out
- Matt Smith seemed less… Matt Smith-y 

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