Why Day of the Moon is absolutely brilliant

Okay. It’s officially time to derail this into a Doctor Who blog. It’s not like I’ve been using it for anything else lately. So, without further ado…

Spoiler Warning for Series 5 and 6

This Post not Dr. Song Approved

Seriously, spoilers like you can’t even believe

If you haven’t seen it, turn back now

This is your final warning

So, a lot of people have apparently come away from Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon with the impression that Day of the Moon was just ‘slapped together’, that it lacked cohesive direction and was confused and muddled. You can see a couple of these criticisms here and here.

On the other hand, I found the entire episode gripping. The pacing was fast and frenetic at times, but it really worked for the sense of urgency and danger that the characters were facing. The only things that blatantly didn’t make sense to me were the parts that are clearly not supposed to make sense yet - Amy’s pregnancy / Timehead, and Eye Patch Lady.

Maybe I read far too much into this episode when I saw it. But the thing that a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that we’re dealing with Steven Moffat, the man who intentionally shot a scene that looked like a technical goof (the Doctor’s missing coat in Flesh and Stone), let fans believe it was a technical goof, and then revealed that it was really quite intentional, and in fact we were looking at a Doctor further along his timestream in that brief moment. Playing with the narrative structure of television seems to be his new favorite thing.

So, why wouldn’t we assume that playing with the narrative form of television is the status quo now? The thing that strikes me is that the Silence are pretty explicitly a force that affects your memory; all Moffat has done is extend this to the narrative flow of the program. The episode is missing important segments (the resolution of the cliffhanger from The Impossible Astronaut being the most glaring), because the characters’ memories are missing important segments. The narrative is designed to parallel (and thus convey) the experience of the TARDIS crew.

That is what is so brilliant, for me, about Day of the Moon. To steal something someone said over at Gallifrey Base (I can’t find the thread now), Moffat is employing the Unreliable Narrator. On television. Without a narrator. And the story, as told, works fantastically when you approach it with that understanding.