I must start this off with a warning, this review does have quite a number of spoilers so if you haven’t watched the episode yet, turn back now.
Those that know my TV tastes know that even before I started watching Doctor Who, I thought Steven Moffat was a genius. Now that I’ve been through Doctor Who I think he’s a super genius and any episode written by him I make sure I have no distractions. Also for anyone who didn’t read the review on the first episode you can find it here.
Three months after the events of the last episode we find Canton Delaware The Third pursuing each of the members of the Doctor’s Team. (Cool trivia moment: Did you know that the two people who played Delaware Are W. Morgan Sheppard and Mark Sheppard, Father and Son playing the same role, just the different ages.) Each of them are all marked up with numbers, written by themselves anytime they witness the silence.
They’re each taken back to Area 51 (tee hee hee) where the Doctor is being held (and he has a beard!). Turns out is was all a plan though as when they’re locked up in an alien box they’re able to go out and figure out what to do with the Silence.
We find Amy and Delaware heading out to one of the spookiest houses ever created. Can I just say the creepy horror of that place was perfect. An orphanage only manned by one man, messages written all over the walls and no one else in sight. Having them click their hands with a recorder was an added bonus because you could every once in a while see their hand glowing and I know I got excited. But the big spoilery detail of this spawning ground for Silence was in the possibility of who the little girl was. Do you have any ideas? Because it seemed pretty likely that somehow Amy Pond’s daughter was living there. What do you think of the pregnancy issue? The Doctor at the end of the episode scanned her and had one of the coolest moments where we found that she was simultaneously pregnant and not. No one’s ever been pregnant on the TARDIS before, at least not to my recollection so perhaps that’s what could cause this? And in my personal favorite moment of the episode the final sequence where we might possibly have Amy Pond’s daughter being a Time Lord? Oh man I was in chills.
But what of the Silence? An alien race that has seemingly taken over the entire earth? I had been thinking all week of how you beat a race of aliens you can’t see. Even during the episode I was thinking, should I be carrying a pen around with me and see if I encounter any of them standing around? Well the Doctor is just more clever then I am and in a stroke of genius they set up a connection with the moon landing, the one piece of video which is most commonly held to be the most watched piece of television ever, and splice into it a message of one of the silence ordering each of us to kill them. Oh the chills were back, now we’re all secretly fighting a war we have no idea is happening. Maybe this is why people are struck by lightning? I dunno, just a thought.
But there’s one more thing, the most bittersweet moment of the episode. I have been loving River Song’s entire story line, but we’re all experiencing he story through the Doctor and not the other way around. She had talked about how for her it’s all going backwards, each time she meets the Doctor he’s encountered less and less, and the end of the episode really sealed the deal, it was an exciting moment because for us it was The Doctor’s first kiss. I loved his reaction, flopping around like a fish, but yet for her it was officially her last kiss with the Doctor. It was one of those perfect moments for me, which means we’re going to get them flirting a lot more from now on and she’s going to be a lot happier, but now I want to go back and watch the rest of her episodes, she knows she has lost him as far as a partner goes. Did you experience the same thing I did?
What did you all think of the episode? I thought it set up some amazing things for the season and if done right this could be one of those seasons that people will be talking about for years. I think it could possibly end up with as good an ending as season 3’s Last of the Time Lords. Maybe I’m just overly optimistic but I’m really happy with this episode and with what possibly could be coming up.
So what do you think? Excited for what’s coming up? Have any unanswered questions that you want to mill about?