What does Moffat pull out of his hat now? Well, first of all he kills the Doctor and then he introduces the best new aliens since the Weeping Angels. That's the first ten minutes sorted. The Silence are a fantastic idea, brilliantly realised. The mask is excellent, as is the weird, almost rubbery, suit they wear. Best of all is the bizarre, almost slow-motion electrical effect with which they prepare their attacks: an odd, balancing stance, oversized fingers splayed, puckered mouth stretching open. It's visually dramatic, distinctive and interesting.
After that the story crackles with lots of tiny little jokes and moments that ensure this is lots of fun indeed. Delaware's dry sense of humour ("I like your wheels."); the invisible TARDIS; the River/Doctor banter ("Mrs Robinson." "I hate you."); Nixon smoothing things over will all and sundry; Rory's "America salutes you."; the Doctor casually ruining Nixon by making him paranoid ("You have to tape everything that happens in this office. Every word... You have to trust me and nobody else."); the Doctor fiddling about with Apollo 11... There are more besides but these are just the ones I can remember.
Although this is a satisfying and entertaining adventure, it is a little modular in construction and not all the pieces connect smoothly. The beginning in 2011 Utah, and the climatic scenes are the best: both very effective and exciting, the former merging nicely (via an introduction to the younger Canton Delaware III) into Nixon's Washington. The Florida orphanage sequence is properly creepy but it draws on influences that haven't before had an obvious effect on Doctor Who: The X-Files, certainly, but it also reminds me of video games like Resident Evil.
Annoyingly, while some of Moffat's excellent stories have had the odd minor bump in the plot, this one suffers from some obvious and irreconcilable problems. The Doctor's ingenious and premeditated plan to use the Moon landing to inspire a revolution against the Silence only works because - much later - one of the aliens happens to say something useful to Canton who happens to be recording it on Amy's phone. It works, but it rather undermines the cleverness of the plan, even if it can't diminish the brilliance of the moment when it comes.
And the two episodes don't fit together. Yes, there is supposed to be a break in the narrative in order to fuel the escape that launches the beginning of Day of the Moon, but it doesn't make enough sense. How do Rory and River escape from a tunnel full of the Silence? Why isn't the Doctor or Amy able to help Melody in the space suit? Why doesn't Melody recognise Amy from the photographs of her in her bedroom? And if she does, why doesn't she say something? Why a three month gap? If it was three weeks, I could just about imagine Rory and Amy surviving and evading the FBI, without money or resources, but three months? Presumably they just hopped forwards in the TARDIS and the whole on-the-run thing was then staged by Delaware for the benefit of the Silence - but this is never stated or explained, and we are invited to believe that this is not what happened.
Throughout all of this there is the niggling question of how much River remembers. In The Wedding of River Song, the Doctor tells her that she won't remember killing him, but River tells Amy that she was "pretending I didn't recognise that space suit in Florida". Of course, she has a vested interest in allowing events to follow their original path, but she goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid giving the game away. The River that witnesses the Doctor's 'death' and returns to the diner knows that the Doctor has survived - yet she slaps the younger Doctor very hard across the face when she sees him anyway. Maybe it was for something else.
Despite all that, River is still the best thing about this story and it's great to navigate some of the choppy temporal waters between her and the Doctor. So far we have seen it all from the Doctor's point of view, experiencing glimmers of River's foreknowledge from the outside. In that diner scene, after Lake Silencio, it becomes clear that we have switched. Suddenly we are with River, we know what will happen to the younger, ignorant Doctor stood before us, asking awkward questions. River replies, "Spoilers!" and for the first time we are inside the loop with her.
She follows this with that heart-breaking conversation with her father, in the tunnels underneath Florida.
RORY: What did you mean? What you said to Amy. There's a worst day coming for you.
RIVER: When I first met the Doctor, a long, long time ago, he knew all about me. Think about that. An impressionable young girl and, suddenly this man just drops out of the sky and he's clever and mad and wonderful, and knows every last thing about her. Imagine what that does to a girl.
RORY: I don't really have to.
RIVER: The trouble is, it's all back to front. My past is his future. We're travelling in opposite directions. Every time we meet, I know him more, he knows me less. I live for the days when I see him, but I know that every time I do, he'll be one step further away. And the day is coming when I'll look into that man's eyes, my Doctor, and he won't have the faintest idea who I am. And I think it's going to kill me.
Such an important exchange that explodes backwards and forwards in time, connecting to all sorts of other moments - most obviously Let's Kill Hitler and Silence in the Library. But by the end of this story it becomes clear that River has more or less resigned herself to this agonising experience by the time she meets the Doctor in the Library. By then she's already dead. The moment that kills her comes at the end of Day of the Moon and, appropriately enough, given their first meeting in Berlin, the Doctor kills her with a kiss; a kiss that turns out to be his first, and her last.
NEXT TIME...
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