Day of the Moon (TV story)

Day of the Moon was the second episode in the sixth series of Doctor Who. It heavily featured location filming across Utah. Some scenes, such as River's plunge from a skyscraper, were filmed back in Cardiff.

Synopsis
The Doctor is locked in the perfect prison. Amy, Rory and River Song are hunted across America by the FBI. With the help of new friend and FBI-insider, Canton Everett Delaware III, they reunite to share their discoveries, if not their memories. The world is occupied by an alien force who control humanity with post-hypnotic suggestion and no one can be trusted. Aided by President Nixon and Neil Armstrong's foot, the Doctor must mount a revolution to drive out the enemy and rescue the missing little girl. No one knows why they took her or why they have kidnapped Amy Pond.

Plot
Three months after the events of the warehouse, Amy is chased down the Valley of Gods in Utah. She has strange pen markings all over her skin and arms. She is cornered between two SUVs and a cliff-face. Canton Delaware advises her to surrender,. When she wonders if he remembers what happened at the warehouse, he responds by shooting her down. Her body is brought to the Doctor, a strait-jacketed prisoner at Area 51.

River Song, also covered in markings, explores an unfinished skyscraper in New York City filled with the mysterious aliens. FBI agents corner her at the edge of the building. Again, Canton advises her to surrender, but she warns them of the alien occupation and smiles sadly before falling off the side of the building.

Finally, Rory -- also covered in markings -- is shot at the Glen Canyon Dam. His corpse is also brought to the Doctor. FBI agents have spent the past three months building a perfect prison around the Time Lord: blocks of dwarf star alloy that seal together perfectly, constructing a solid block that is soundproof and impregnable. With it finished, Canton seals himself inside with the Doctor and the two body bags.

Once the door is closed, the Doctor, Amy and Rory easily free themselves from their constraints and Canton takes on a much friendlier tone. The Doctor reveals the parked, invisible TARDIS, into which they all climb. When Canton expresses concern for River, the Doctor parks the TARDIS alongside the building so she can fall into its swimming pool. The trio clean themselves of the markings, tallies of aliens they've seen in the past three months, proving this is not an alien invasion. They've been here all along. Privately, Amy informs the Doctor she made a mistake and she is not pregnant. The Doctor knows how to defeat the aliens. Landing the TARDIS, they rush outside to find they are a short distance away from Cape Kennedy, where Apollo 11 is being prepared for launch. The key to the aliens' defeat, the Doctor explains, is Neil Armstrong's foot.

The Doctor implants a nanorecorder in each of his companions' palms, explaining they are to activate it and leave themselves a message each time they have an encounter. When it flashes red, they'll know they've seen one of the creatures. Canton casually adjusts the Doctor's bowtie, but is horrified to find his nanorecorder is flashing. The message, "How the hell did it get here?" makes them realise there is an alien near the TARDIS doors.

It is not real. The Doctor has extrapolated the image from Amy's phone and projected it into the TARDIS as a hologram, yet the effect is the same. The message also contains the Doctor's voice ordering Canton to straighten his bowtie upon turning around. That he did so confirms the Doctor's suspicions that the aliens possess the power of post-hypnotic suggestion.

The Doctor sends Canton and Amy to Graystark Hall, a children's home a few miles from Cape Kennedy. The warden is clearly mad, believing the year to be 1967. Orders to leave are scrawled all over the walls. Amy goes off on her own to investigate, finding a nest of hibernating aliens on the ceiling of a room. Her nanorecorder flashes red; she has left a message warning herself to leave and there are tally marks all over her arms and face. Eventually, she departs, forgetting, but one of the aliens wakes as the door slams behind her. Down the hall, Amy spots a woman with an eyepatch looking at her through a slot in one of the doors. When she steps inside, the room is empty and the slot is gone. It is a child's bedroom, scattered with toys and pictures of the little girl. Amy discovers one picture of herself with the girl as a baby. While trying to make sense of it, the little girl, still in the astronaut suit, enters behind her, begging for help. Amy apologises for shooting her and tries to explain that she will kill the Doctor in the future. The girl continues to beg for help, confusing Amy further. Two of the aliens enter. Amy screams.

In the warden's office, Canton hears Amy's screams, but before he can go to help her, one of the aliens enters. Activating his nanorecorder, Canton asks why the alien doesn't have a weapon. After haughtily stating that, as the owners of the planet, they don't need weapons, Canton pulls out his gun, shoots the creature and welcomes it to America before running out of the room.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has been busy. He is caught breaking into the Apollo 11 command module, where he has rearranged the electronics and added his own device. President Nixon arrives in the TARDIS with River and Rory and orders the Doctor's release. As they depart, the Doctor receives a call from Canton, who is asks for help.

They rendezvous at the orphanage, where Canton is trying to break into the child's room. Amy can be heard inside, crying for help. The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to open the door, but they are horrified to find Amy missing. All that's left of her is her nanorecorder on the floor, broadcasting her words, and the abandoned astronaut suit; unbeknownst to them, the little girl lurks around the corner, listening to them. On learning Canton has shot one of the aliens, the Doctor rushes to the warden's office to confront the creature. He asks what it is and the alien replies that it is the Silence and silence will fall. This echoes warnings the Doctor has received from Prisoner Zero and Rosanna Calvierri.

Rory, River, and the Doctor set about finding Amy, returning the empty astronaut suit to the warehouse. Canton brings the wounded alien to the Doctor's prison at Area 51, where it is fixed up by a military doctor. The alien gloats the Silence have ruled the world since the Stone Age, and that it was a mistake for Canton to treat its wounds. When Canton asks what he should have done, it replies the humans should kill them all "on sight." Canton smugly reveals that he has recorded this on Amy's video phone.

In the Florida warehouse, River and the Doctor dissect the space suit, learning it is the perfect life support machine. This explains how the little girl was able to survive Amy shooting her. It is fitted with at least twenty types of alien tech, meaning the little girl must be very strong to have fought her way out of it. River wonders if the suit could move without an occupant, remembering the little girl's original phone call claimed the space man was coming to eat her. Rory, meanwhile, is devastated by Amy's disappearance, keeping her nanorecorder with him at all times. In one instance, Amy tells the listener that her life was so boring before he "dropped out of the sky" and that he needs to get his "stupid face" where she can see it. Rory believes she is referring to the Doctor, who tries to reassure him of Amy's love for him by reminding him of the two thousand years he spent protecting her.

Amy wakes to find herself tied to a standing framework, surrounded by the Silence, in their console room. The Silence inform her that she has been with them for several days and that she will help "bring the silence."

The launch of Apollo 11 goes off without a hitch. On the day of the moon landing, the Doctor tracks the signal from Amy's nanorecorder to her location and lands the TARDIS there. He brings a television with him and sets it on the console. He tells the Silence he is not violent, but River will not hesitate to shoot any of them. He asks the Silence why the little girl is so important to them. They do not answer. He gets the television set working for the live broadcast of the moon landing and uses the device he put in the command module to hack the broadcast signal just as Neil Armstrong's foot touches the lunar surface. The image is replaced with the video Canton took on Amy's phone: the Silence saying that humans should kill them all on sight.

This seals the fate of the Silence. Every human in history will see this famous broadcast. Through their power of post-hypnotic suggestion, the Silence have just ordered their own execution. People who watch the live broadcast obey this order, shooting the Silence without thinking. Enraged by the Doctor's victory, the Silence attack. Rory goes to free Amy, but she orders him to get his "stupid face" to safety. With the Doctor's assistance, he gets her to the TARDIS, where they wait as River kills every alien in the room and calmly joins them in the TARDIS.

They return Canton to the Oval Office and the Doctor tells Nixon to record everything that goes on in the office (a reference to the Watergate Scandal). Nixon, who has been told that the Doctor is from the future, wonders if the American people will remember him. The Doctor replies that he will never be forgotten. He informs Nixon that all Canton wants to do is get married and insists that Nixon should give his permission and allow Canton to return to the FBI as a parting favour. As the TARDIS disappears, Nixon says that Canton's girlfriend must be black and he's sure he can help; he is really more liberal than most people think. Canton corrects him. "She" is "he." Nixon tells him the moon is far enough for now.

River is returned to prison. The Doctor offers her a chance to travel with him. She declines, saying she has made a promise and he'll soon understand. As the Doctor turns to leave, River pulls him into a lingering kiss. When he is confused, she realises that, from the Doctor's perspective, this is their first kiss -- meaning that, from her perspective, it will be their last.

The Doctor sends Rory on an errand in the TARDIS, giving him and Amy time to talk about her pregnancy. She admits she didn't tell Rory about it because she was afraid that her time spent in the TARDIS would give the baby some deformity. Unbeknownst to her, Rory is listening to their conversation via her nanorecorder, which is still broadcasting. She catches him and reassures him he is safe and she is not pregnant. The Doctor, however, is less certain. While he sets the TARDIS on course for a new destination, he has the console scan Amy for pregnancy. The readings flicker back and forth between a positive and negative reading.

Six months later, in New York City, a homeless man comes across the little girl in an alley. She is coughing and reveals that she is dying -- but that it'll be okay, because she can fix it. He flees in terror as she begins to regenerate.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Matt Smith
 * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
 * Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
 * River Song - Alex Kingston
 * Little Girl - Sydney Wade
 * Canton Delaware - Mark Sheppard
 * President Richard Nixon - Stuart Milligan
 * Carl - Chukwudi Iwuji
 * Phil - Mark Griffin
 * The Silent - Marnix Van Den Broeke
 * Doctor Renfrew - Kerry Shale
 * Gardner - Glenn Wrage
 * Doctor Shepherd - Peter Banks
 * Tramp - Ricky Fearon
 * Eye Patch Lady - Frances Barber
 * Grant - Jeff Mash
 * Sergeant - Tommy Campbell

Individuals

 * The Doctor asks Nixon to say "Hi" to David Frost for him.

Objects

 * When the Doctor, Amy and Rory enter the TARDIS, the Doctor asks Rory to grab some thermocouplings. (DW: Space)

Films

 * This story shares similarities with the 1988 John Carpenter film They Live, in which the protagonist discovers a hidden alien race living amongst humans, using subliminal messages to influence their development. In fact, the Doctor's method for defeating the Silence, broadcasting the aliens' own voice and subliminal control via television to command humanity to kill its secret rulers, closely resembles Ray Nelson's 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" – the basis for They Live.

Story notes

 * This episode had the working title Look Behind You.
 * This is the first two-part opening episode of the revived series.
 * The Doctor mentions David Frost, referencing the famous interviews by Frost of Nixon and the film Frost/Nixon. Michael Sheen, who played Frost in the film, appeared as the voice of House two episodes later in The Doctor's Wife.
 * The Doctor calls for help after he is captured breaking into Apollo 11. Rory, River and President Nixon arrive in the TARDIS to help him. This is one of the very rare moments in the series where someone other than the Doctor (in this case River) pilots the TARDIS without the Doctor on board.
 * The Doctor tells Nixon that he has to tape everything that he says in his office or else he won't know if the Silent has affected him. This is a reference to the Nixon tapes, with the famous eighteen and a half minute gap in one of the tapes.
 * The opening narration by Amy, while standard for broadcasts in the United States, Australia, and Canada, is absent in the Canadian broadcast.
 * This marks the first time that a female regenerates onscreen in a canonical Doctor Who production, discounting the Minyans in DW: Underworld and Romana's partly-onscreen regeneration in DW: Destiny of the Daleks.

Ratings

 * 7.30 million (36.7% market share)

Myths

 * We will see River Song as a child. This has been proven true in Let's Kill Hitler.
 * This episode will air the day after The Impossible Astronaut  This has been proven false

Filming locations

 * The Prequel to The Impossible Astronaut was shot on 11 November, 2010. Other scenes shot that day included the scene in the 'perfect prison'. These sequences were shot metres from each other as the Oval Office stood about half a dozen paces from the Doctor's cell.

Production errors

 * When River backs toward the edge of the building, she's still a few inches from the edge before she falls back.
 * When President Nixon arrives to bail out the Doctor, River and he follow the Doctor back into the TARDIS. When the camera focuses on Rory, you hear the TARDIS doors close, but when it shows Rory again, they're still partially open.
 * Close examination of the television sets shows they only have one tuning dial, clearly marked "UHF". American television receivers of that era would have had two mechanical tuning dials, one for VHF and one for UHF. Sets from the UK would presumably only have the UHF dial if it was a 625-line PAL set, as VHF had only been used for the 405-line System A transmission that was the original BBC signal standard.
 * Dwarf star alloy would be far too heavy for two men to lift. The Doctor calls this "Zero-Balance dwarf star alloy. "Zero-Balance" may explain the comparative lightness.
 * The audio of the moon landing playing in the final confrontation between the Doctor and the Silents is incorrect. You can clearly hear Armstrong say "engines stopped", identifying the audio clip as from the landing of the Eagle Lunar Module, which occurred several hours before Armstrong stepped on the moon. When the Doctor finally points to the screen, the audio and video are of Armstrong's historic first step.
 * In the orphanage, Doctor Renfrew is holding a cloth in his right hand, then there is a shot of Amy and Canton, and then when the camera cuts back to Doctor Renfrew, the cloth is in his left hand. After another shot of Amy and Canton, the cloth is back in his right hand. This is either a production error or he passed it to each hand between shots.
 * Nixon appears not to recognize the name David Frost. In reality, Frost interviewed Nixon in 1968 and Nixon was so pleased with the outcome he met with the journalist to discuss future projects.

Continuity

 * During the events of DW: The Lodger, the Doctor enters a TARDIS-like console room, which contains the deceased body of an alien, which distinctly has the same number of fingers as the Silence. It's possible that the events of this story are the reason behind the ship crashing at Aickman Road.
 * River Song mocks the Doctor for brandishing his sonic screwdriver in a gunfight and tells him to go "build a cabinet", similar to a conversation Captain Jack had with the Ninth Doctor. (DW: The Doctor Dances)
 * The Doctor tastes the "TARDIS blue"-coloured envelope in an attempt to gather information. (DW: The Hungry Earth, The Idiot's Lantern, The Eleventh Hour, Tooth and Claw)
 * River's scanner is branded Magpie Electricals. (DW: The Idiot's Lantern)
 * The Doctor recalls Prisoner Zero, a silent Venice and the voice claiming "silence will fall". (DW: The Eleventh Hour, The Vampires of Venice, The Pandorica Opens)
 * Rory reveals he remembers the two thousand years he spent as an Auton guarding the Pandorica with Amy inside, but that he doesn't always have those memories. (DW: The Big Bang)
 * The Tenth Doctor has previously been held prisoner in Area 51. (DW: Dreamland).
 * The Doctor opens the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers. (DW: Forest of the Dead, ''The Eleventh Hour)
 * The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones watched the Apollo 11 moon landing four times. (DW: Blink)
 * Dwarf star alloy previously featured in DW: Warriors' Gate and briefly in DW: The Family of Blood.
 * When the Doctor discovers the Silence' underground lair, which is nearly identical to the interior of the 79B Aickman Road timeship, he makes the comparison, describing it as being "very Aickman Road." (DW: The Lodger)
 * When Canton tells the Doctor that River jumped off a skyscraper, he replies, "It's okay, she does that", referencing her leap out of an airlock in The Time of Angels. The Doctor once again positions the TARDIS to catch her after she makes the seemingly fatal leap.
 * The Doctor has apparently found (or recreated) the TARDIS' swimming pool. He orders everyone to open the doors to its room, referencing DW:The Eleventh Hour.
 * The music cue that plays when the Doctor drops River off at Stormcage is used later in DW: A Good Man Goes to War when River reveals her identity to Amy and Rory. It also plays when the future Doctor's body is burned and when the little girl regenerates.
 * The Doctor says that the dwarf star alloy is being used to build the "perfect prison". This was used to describe the Pandorica in The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang.
 * The Doctor catches River by having Rory and Amy open all the doors to the swimming pool and then positioning the TARDIS to catch her. Given the layout of the console room and the fact that the splash from the pool is visible on screen, it is likely the Doctor rearranged the interior of the TARDIS so the pool room's doors became the entry doors, allowing River to fall directly into the pool, rather than letting her fall through the console room (and likely hitting the console itself) and into the pool room.
 * The Fourth Doctor previously displayed admiration (albeit reluctant) for Leela's killing skills in PDA: Match of the Day.

Timeline
For the Doctor, Amy and Rory: For adult River Song: For young Melody:
 * This story occurs after DW: The Impossible Astronaut.
 * This story occurs before DWAN: Extinction Event.
 * This story occurs after DW: The Impossible Astronaut.
 * This story occurs before DW: The Pandorica Opens.
 * This story occurs after DW: The Impossible Astronaut.
 * This story occurs before DW: Let's Kill Hitler.

Home video releases
This story was released as Series 6 Part 1 with The Impossible Astronaut, The Curse of the Black Spot, The Doctor's Wife, The Rebel Flesh, The Almost People and A Good Man Goes to War on 11 July 2011.