Day of the Moon (TV story)

Day of the Moon was the second episode in the sixth series of Doctor Who.

Synopsis
The Doctor is locked in the perfect prison. Amy, Rory and River Song are being hunted down across America by the FBI. With the help of new friend and FBI-insider, Canton Everett Delaware the Third, our heroes are reunited to share their discoveries, if not their memories. For the world is occupied by an alien force who control humanity through 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 Amy shot at the little girl, she is chased down in the middle of the Valley of the Gods in Utah. She has strange pen markings and tally marks all over her skin. Eventually, she is cornered between two SUVs and a cliff face. Canton Delaware advises her to surrender, but eventually shoots her. Her body is brought before the Doctor, who is being kept prisoner at Area 51 in chains and a straitjacket.

River Song, also covered in markings, is caught in New York, between the unfinished edge of a skyscraper and Canton's FBI unit. She decides to jump instead of being arrested. Finally, Rory -- also covered in markings -- is shot on a dam. He is also taken to the Doctor, who is now having a wall built around him -- blocks that seal together perfectly to make one solid box. It is soundproof and impregnable -- the perfect prison. As it is finished, Canton steps inside and seals the door from the inside.

Once the door is closed, the pretense is dropped and the Doctor easily frees himself. Amy and Rory free themselves from the body bags, and Canton takes on a much friendlier tone with the three. After saving River from the fall by landing the TARDIS on the side of the building and opening the doors into the swimming pool, the three begin to clean themselves of markings, which are actually tally charts of how many aliens they had seen in the three months. The aliens have been found to be everywhere, all across the world. It is not an invasion --- they've been here all along. In private, Amy tells the Doctor she is not actually pregnant - she made a mistake.

The Doctor implants each occupant of the TARDIS with a nanorecorder. It flashes red when a message has been left, and after Canton casually adjusts the Doctor's bowtie, the Doctor points out to him that his is already flashing. The message begins "How the hell did it get in here?!", and when Canton turns around, sure enough, there is an alien standing in the TARDIS behind him. But it is not a real alien; the Doctor has extrapolated the image of the alien from Amy's phone and turned it into a hologram, which is now being projected behind Canton. Even though it is only an image, it is still impossible to remember it once you are no longer looking directly at it. The message also contains the Doctor's voice, telling Canton to turn around and straighten the Doctor's bow tie after he stops looking at the hologram. Like a post-hypnotic suggestion, it was the last thing in Canton's head when he looked away, so he did that. Even the information would eventually disappear.

Canton and Amy investigate a children's home, where the girl in the astronaut suit may have been taken from. The only person in the building believes that it is 1967, not 1969, and he is delirious. Amy begins to explore, when a room door locks itself. She notices her hand is flashing - the message she left herself advises her to leave, as do markings on the wall. She realises that she has begun to tally her arms again, and she is covered in marks. She looks up - the ceiling is completely covered with sleeping aliens.

She runs out of the room, quickly forgetting her encounter. Down the hallway, she sees a mysterious woman with an eye patch looking out from a slot hole in a metal door. She goes to investigate, but finds the room empty -- and the slot hole on the door gone. Inside she finds a photo of herself with the girl as a baby. Suddenly the girl in the astronaut suit walks into the room and begs Amy to help her. Before Amy can do anything, however, a pair of aliens enter the room and trap Amy.

Canton hears Amy's screams and an alien suddenly appears in front of him. Canton activates his nanorecorder, then interrogates the alien. After it haughtily states that as the rulers of the planet, its people do not need to carry weapons, Canton pulls out his gun and shoots the alien, badly wounding it.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has been busy -- he is apprehended at NASA after breaking into the Command module, Columbia, atop the Saturn V rocket, and rearranging some of the electronics. After President Richard Nixon arrives with Rory and River Song and orders the Doctor's release, he receives a call from Canton, asking for help.

Amy has gone missing, and her nanorecorder left on the floor. It has been switched from recording to live broadcast -- Amy's current words can be heard. They also find the girl's astronaut suit which now lies empty on the floor. The Doctor confronts the wounded alien and asks who and what it is. The alien reveals its species to be "the Silence", and warns the Doctor that "silence will fall" - echoing the warnings of Prisoner Zero.

While Rory, River and the Doctor set about finding Amy, Canton returns to the cell at Area 51 with the Silent in tow, and talks with it. The alien gloats that the Silence have ruled the world since the Stone Age. It tells him that it was a mistake to bandage him and, when asked what the Silence would do in the Humans' place, responds "you should kill us on sight". Canton reveals that he recorded this on Amy's camera phone - despite not understanding what a "camera phone" is - and leaves. As Canton has been gone several days, the soldiers are naturally curious -- they calm down after President Nixon puts in another appearance.

River and the Doctor begin to dissect the astronaut suit. They find it is in fact a perfect life support machine -- this is how the girl could survive Amy shooting her. It is comprised of at least 20 different types of alien tech, and the occupant would not even have to eat to survive while wearing it.

Meanwhile, Amy wakes up and finds herself tied to a chair and surrounded by the Silence. The Silence inform her that she has been there for several days and that she will "bring the silence."

The launch of Apollo 11 goes off without a hitch, and the Doctor tracks the signal from Amy's nanorecorder to the room where she is being held. He brings an old television with him, and River brings her gun - she claims she could take down at least seven should they choose to attack. The Doctor doesn't seem to mind, unusually. He sets up the television in time for the live broadcast of the famous "One small step" speech, but hacks into the signal just as Neil Armstrong's foot touches the lunar surface. As it does, the image turns to Canton's video of the Silent saying "You should kill us all on sight" -- in short, sealing the fate of all the Silence on the planet, since this footage is some of the most famous in human history, with every human seeing it at some point in their lives. The post-hypnotic suggestion of the Silent's appearance will command every human who ever sees the footage to kill the Silence on sight, transforming the human race into the eternal mortal enemies of the Silence without ever even knowing the Silence exist.

The enraged Silence try to attack the Doctor, prompting River to shoot all the aliens present, while the Doctor and Rory free Amy. They withdraw to the TARDIS, and Canton is delivered to the Oval Office, where Nixon asks the Doctor if he will be remembered. The Doctor replies by telling him "They'll never forget you," without going into detail. As the TARDIS disappears, Canton asks the President if he can rejoin the FBI, who had fired him because he wishes to be married. Nixon realises that, since he is asking the President for help, Canton's girlfriend must be "black", and he states he is quite liberal, and that he's sure he can help Canton. Canton corrects the President -- "she" is actually a "he". Nixon stops talking, but is visibly disturbed.

River Song is delivered back to jail, where she and the Doctor kiss. The Doctor is shaken and does not know how to react, and ends up bolting, but River is even more shaken by the realization that, because this is their first kiss from the Doctor's perspective, that from her perspective, she will never kiss him again.



Rory continues to spy on Amy and the Doctor over the nanorecorder. Amy had not told him she thought she was pregnant since she is worried that the TARDIS may have had an effect on the child, giving it abnormalities such as multiple 'time heads'. After Amy chides Rory for eavesdropping and reassures him that he is safe, the Doctor prepares to leave on an adventure, while having the TARDIS computer scan Amy for pregnancy -- it flickers between a positive and a negative reading, leaving the actual reading unclear.

Six months later, in New York, the girl, coughing, comes across a homeless man in the street. She tells the man that she is dying, "but that's OK, because it's easy to fix". To the man's astonishment -- and terror, resulting in him fleeing -- the girl begins to regenerate.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Matt Smith
 * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
 * Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
 * River Song - Alex Kingston
 * Canton Delaware - Mark Sheppard
 * President Richard Nixon - Stuart Milligan
 * Carl - Chukwudi Iwuji
 * Phil - Mark Griffin
 * The Silent - Marnix Van Den Broeke
 * Little Girl - Sydney Wade
 * 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

Crew

 * Writer - Steven Moffat
 * Director - Toby Haynes

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)

Story notes

 * This episode had the working title: Look Behind You.
 * This is the first two part opening episode of the revived series, and the first since Attack of the Cybermen.
 * The flashing red lights seen in the palm of the hand is also seen in the science fiction film Logan's Run.

Ratings

 * 5.4 million (overnight figures only. Full consolidated figures are only published a week after the initial air-date)

Myths

 * We will see River Song as a child.
 * 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 President Nixon arrives to bail out the Doctor, he and River 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.

Continuity

 * 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 in 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 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 that 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 Doctor was previously held prisoner in Area 51 in Dreamland.
 * The Doctor recognizes the Silence's chamber as being similar to the Time Ship from The Lodger.
 * The Doctor tells the Silence he is lying about going easy on them, claiming "it's not Christmas" which likely references the time he allowed the Sycorax to leave unscathed after they tried to take over the human race. (DW: The Christmas Invasion) However this does contrast with the time he killed all the Racnoss offspring at Christmas in a similar plot (DW: The Runaway Bride).
 * The Doctor opens the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers (DW: Forest of the Dead).
 * An earlier version of the doctor and Martha Jones watched the moon landing firsthand four times (DW: Blink), making them among those who would not have seen the interrupted transmission when it occurred.
 * Dwarf star alloy previously featured in DW: Warriors' Gate and briefly in DW: The Family of Blood.
 * When the Doctor discovers the Silence's underground lair, which is identical to the interior of the 79B Aickman Road timeship, he makes the comparison, describing it as being "very Aickman Road." (DW: The Lodger)

Timeline

 * Day of the Moon occurs after: The Impossible Astronaut.
 * Day of the Moon occurs before: The Curse of the Black Spot.

Home video releases
The DVD will be released in two halves. Part One, which will contain episodes one to seven, will be released in Summer, shortly after the airing of episode seven.