ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
This story marks the start of the most complicated,
mind-bending, continuity drenched storyline that Doctor Who and the
labyrinthine mind of Steven Moffatt in particular ever gave us. By the end of
the season we would have all the answers but getting there would involve so
many twists and turns I find that it makes me a bit giddy.
It starts off with Amy, Rory and River all receiving letters
from the Doctor telling them to gather together. He then arrives, some 200
years older than when Amy and Rory last saw him, and takes them to the shores
of Lake Silencio. Here the Doctor meets an astronaut who emerges from the Lake
and then shoots him dead. A man then arrives carrying a can of gasoline, this is
Canton Everett Delaware III (William Morgan Sheppard) who has also received
instructions from the Doctor. The Doctor’s body is cremated, Viking style, on
the Lake shore.
The trio return to a diner and are suddenly joined by a 200
year younger version of the Doctor who has also received a letter. The trio
tell him of the meeting at the Lake and Canton, but not about his own death. So
they then travel to 1969 and encounter a younger version of Canton (Mark
Sheppard) who is working for President Nixon (Stuart Milligan) who is receiving
a series of calls from a young girl (Sydney Wade) asking for help.
Meanwhile Amy encounters the Silence, an alien that you
forget as soon as you turn your back on it. They have been living amongst the
humans for decades, manipulating events from behind the scenes.
The Doctor, Amy, Rory, River and Canton track the girl to
Florida and they find a network of tunnels under the ground that the Silence
have been using to travel around the world unnoticed. Amy comes across someone
in a spacesuit, like whoever killed the Doctor in the future, and shoots it
with Canton’s gun. It turns out to have been the young girl.
The Doctor and co then spend the next few months tracking
down the Silence, marking on their bodies every time they encounter one. They
also try to track down the origins of the girl, and how she came to be trapped
inside the space suit. The Doctor realises that the Silence have been
influencing human evolution for decades in order to create the suit. Canton,
interrogating a captured Silence, records it saying that if seen humans should
kill any Silence.
This video is inserted into the live broadcast of the Moon
Landings and thus stops the plans of the Silence in their tracks as they are
driven underground by the humans killing them on sight. Amy tells the Doctor
that she thinks she might be pregnant and is concerned that her travels aboard
the TARDIS might affect the child. The Doctor discreetly tries to scan her and
the readings are conflicting.
The girl from the spacesuit is lost and dying months after
she encountered Amy, as she dies she begins to regenerate.
Oh boy there’s a lot to take in in this story. Plotlines
about the Doctor dying, a mysterious young girl trapped in an astronaut suit,
Amy being pregnant, the Silence manipulating mankind, a woman with an eye patch
and much more. You come away with a thousand questions but very few answers.
The concept of the Doctor dying is one that doesn’t really
work. You know he isn’t actually going to die – that would be the end of
the series – so what you’re left with is working out, over the course of this
season, just how he escapes death, what complicated mechanism has Steven
Moffatt got in mind for getting out of this situation!
The Silence are really creepy. They look terrifying and the
idea that you immediately forget them once you’ve turned your back is scary and
effective. In the end, though, the way they are defeated is a bit too easy and
you’re left with the feeling that a truly scary Doctor Who monster has been
underused.
It's a nice touch having the older version of Canton being
played by an actor who is in fact the father of the actor playing the younger
Canton.
Acting is strong throughout, Amy’s wide-eyed look comes in
handy when encountering the Silence. As ever Alex Kingston is super as River
Song, and she rather dominates this story (and in many ways this entire season)
as the ongoing narrative becomes more about River, Amy and Rory than it does
about the Doctor himself. There is some brilliant interplay with Matt Smith
which is the highlight of the story.
It’s a good season opener but episode two is a bit harder to
watch, there are some iconic images, but this is not a story I enjoy that much
on its own merits.
NEXT UP: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK SPOT
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Productions and
Andrew J. Müller,
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and Shaun Runham
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2022
