May 21: "Space" / "Time" / "The Impossible Astronaut" Prequel / "The Impossible Astronaut"

The TARDIS materialises inside itself. ("Space") ©BBC

Nope, we're still not quite to the official start of series 6 yet, as before we get there we've got two mini episodes (and a prequel scene) to go.  "Space" and "Time" were broadcast on 18 March 2011 as part of Comic Relief, the charity telethon that the series has occasionally contributed to.  (See Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death and "From Raxacoricofallapatorius with Love" in case you've forgotten.)

It's a brief little scene, designed more to be cute than anything more substantial, and at this it succeeds reasonably well.  It helps that we're given a clever idea to play with, with the TARDIS inside itself and no way of getting out, which leads to lots of opportunities for characters to react to themselves -- most memorably, Amy seems oddly taken with herself ("Oh, this is how it all ends," the Doctor remarks.  "Pond flirting with herself.  True love at last"), but the bit where Rory asks himself if he'll have to remember all of what his future self just said is also charming.

It's a quick story that doesn't outstay its welcome, and as such is the perfect sort of thing for Comic Relief.  I suppose you could fault it for not being more ambitious, but the time aspects of this are complicated enough that it was probably a wise move not to push it too far.  A charming interlude.

And then we got a quick little prequel teaser of Richard Nixon informing a girl on a telephone that "there are no monsters in the Oval Office", followed by a shot of a strange alien standing there (although the framing of the shot erroneously suggests that Nixon is aware of the alien standing near him -- as this is Nixon we're talking about, you could be forgiven for thinking he was in league with them), and then finally a month later, series 6 properly begins with "The Impossible Astronaut".

DVD and Blu-ray releases

The episode opens with a caption dedicating it to the memory of Elisabeth Sladen (albeit with the wrong birth year -- Sladen was born in 1946, not 1948), who sadly died four days before its premiere²²⁵ -- it's a sweet tribute to one of Doctor Who's most enduringly popular actresses.  We then get a fun little sequence of the Doctor off doing various things on his own that masks an important sea change: before this point, once you started travelling with the Doctor you stayed with him until you left.  Sure, you might occasionally see him again or be able to call him to help you with your Sontaran problem, but travel in the TARDIS was, with the small exception of Pertwee's companions (who were a special case, what with the exile and all), a one-time deal.  But now we see Amy and Rory, dropped off in their own time and place and living their lives but ready to be picked up again by the Doctor at a moment's notice.  It makes running away with the Doctor less risky, if you know you can go home and then back out again without having to worry.  Of course, now we also have to wonder why anyone ever leaves the Doctor, if this is his attitude now.  (And it's not really a question that we have a good answer for -- we've only had three companions (Amy, Rory, and Clara) since this became the norm, and the show had to bend over backwards to provide an explanation for the first two, and Clara is still at time of writing traveling with the Doctor.)

The Doctor is reunited with Amy and Rory. ("The Impossible
Astronaut") ©BBC

So that's the new subtle difference.  The new obvious difference is the location filming.  Doctor Who has performed principal photography in other countries before, but never in the United States -- and as a resident of that country, it's really thrilling to see recognizable landmarks like Monument Valley and knowing that they're really there.  Doctor Who really is going global.

Now as far as plotting goes, "The Impossible Astronaut" is structured oddly.  The first third appears to be setup not for this actual story but for this series' overarching plotline: the Doctor's impending death, which (because this is a show about time travel) we see early on, as an astronaut shoots him dead in 2011, in front of Amy, Rory, and River.  Only it seems that was an older Doctor, and now a younger Doctor arrives, not knowing about what his friends saw, and they have to try and figure out how to save his life.

All well and good, but then the episode, despite the production team's best efforts to tie these two things together, seems to start again as this two-parter's specific story gets underway, as we head back to 1969 America (so it's not just a quick scene and then we're gone -- the whole story is set in the US) and the time of the moon landing, to meet up with a man named Canton Everett Delaware III.  And so Mark Sheppard makes his move to yet another SF show, after having appeared in things like The X-Files, Star Trek: Voyager, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, and a host of others.  Here he's an ex-FBI agent summoned by Nixon to help track down the child who keeps calling him.  Stuart Milligan is a passable Nixon, and after a brief commentary ("Richard Milhous Nixon," River says.  "Vietnam, Watergate.  There's some good stuff, too," she adds.  "Not enough," the Doctor replies.  "Hippie!" River exclaims.  "Archaeologist," the Doctor retorts) the script wisely stays away from any controversial positions, as this story isn't about Nixon.  No, it's about some creepy aliens who look like Edvard Munch's The Scream (an acknowledged influence) and rather wonderfully dress in suits and which no one can remember the moment you stop looking at them, which is a novel and creepy idea.  The death of Joy in the restroom is both funny and frightening, and the total failure of anyone to remember them means that they seem incredibly dangerous.  (They don't appear to be working with Nixon though, as the prequel seemed to imply.)

But answers as to who they are and what they're doing will have to wait, as we've almost reached the cliffhanger.  We've seen a spaceship (presumably belonging to the aliens) that's almost identical to the one from "The Lodger" and River has told Rory about the heartbreak of meeting the Doctor ("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"), which is both sad and strange as we've already seen her die -- so the audience has knowledge that the character lacks, and we know that she's right: it will be the death of her.  But the actual cliffhanger involves an astronaut that we're invited to believe is the same as the one that will kill the Doctor in 2011 -- only there's a young girl inside looking for help.  But that doesn't stop Amy from grabbing Canton's gun and shooting at the astronaut.  "What are you doing?" the Doctor cries.  "Saving your life," Amy replies as she pulls the trigger.  Now that's a cliffhanger.







²²⁵ This caption is missing from the Region 1/A release of The Complete Sixth Series boxset, although a similar caption (with the year corrected) does appear before part one of The Nightmare Man on the fourth series DVD of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  It's not clear why they moved it -- maybe they didn't want the wrong year being perpetuated?