Day 772: Day of the Moon

I think that Day of the Moon is overall better, and easier to love than The Impossible Astronaut. It's not so much a change in the story or the direction, but moreover in how the story is told. The episode is filled with interesting little quirks that show that Doctor Who still has the capacity to be fascinating by just doing cool stuff with the medium of television.

Television tricks are part of the bread and butter of Doctor Who. How else do you think the TARDIS de-materialises if it's not through some clever editing? Moffat has long been a proponent, however, of openly using editing and camera alongside the script to produce strong visual stories. Consider the scene in Graystark Hall. Here, there's a surprisingly creepy scene where Amy discovers that she is surrounded by the Silence, who have the power to remove themselves from people's memories. Now, in prior scenes with the Silence, we've been introduced to them by seeing them, then seeing the characters forget about them with a small audio cue. Later on in the story, we also associate the drawing of tally marks on people's skin as a sign that they have seen the Silence, a helpful visual cue to show what is happening.

The Graystark scene provides something different to what we have seen before by not showing the Silence as Amy sees them. Instead, we see the entire scene from Amy's perspective, as she enters an empty room and, whilst trying to leave, discovers that she has tally marks all over her face. The scene works because it relies on the fact that the audience has become adjusted to how things work in the context of the story. We understand as viewers that we are just observers to this story, and the effect of the Silence will not work on us. But the fact that the Silence's effect does end up working on us through them not being shown by the camera paints the Silence as far more effective villains than once thought, because they have the power to take control of television itself. Of course, it's all done with some simple editing trickery, but the sheer excitement of seeing that for the first time kind of takes your breath away, like all good tricks do.

Of course, there are other things to admire, and even love, about Day of the Moon. A very small thing that I don't know whether anyone else would pick up on is the fact that Murray Gold's music continues from the 'Previously' recap into the pre-titles sequence, lending the story a sense of continuation and continuity between the two halves. Arthur Darvill's performance as Rory Pond is continually heartbreaking and funny, and he's a lot of what makes the BIG section worth watching, in my opinion. And I can't look past the fact that Moffat continually writes Richard Nixon as a figure to be made fun of continually, which is probably far crueller to him than treating him as the credible threat that he is.