Eleventh Doctor Era
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Day of the Moon
Directed by Toby Haynes
Production code: 2.2
Air date: 30 April 2011
Part 2 of 2
The One With… tally marks. Lots and lots of tally marks.
Wait, why are there tally marks on the image caption...?
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Amy is running desperately across a stark red valley, a pen dangling from her neck on a chain and black tally marks covering her whole body. She's in the Valley of the Gods, Utah. Behind Amy are three black cars. She desperately tries to outrun them, but when her path drops off ahead of her, she's forced to stop. Canton Everett Delaware III comes out of the car, carrying a body bag. Amy pleads with him not to kill her. Can he even remember why he's doing this? Can't he remember the night at the warehouse?
Amy can. We see a flashback of her missing the astronaut with the girl inside. We see Rory and River desperately trying to escape, and the Doctor pulling Canton along. He had urged Canton to look behind him, where a Silent — the suit-clad aliens — had been standing in plain sight. The flashback is abruptly finished with the sound of a gunshot. In the present, Amy falls to the ground, apparently dead.
Location: Area 51. In the centre of a hanger sits a chained man, bearded and surrounded by black bricks. The Doctor. He's approached by Canton, who drops a photo of Amy's hand lying in the dirt, showing the tally marks, before him. He says her whole body was covered in these marks, and would he mind explaining why? The Doctor asks Canton to ask her himself, and the agent just looks at him darkly. For a moment, a flicker of sadness passes the Time Lord's face, but he seems far too preoccupied in investigating the bricks. They're encasing him in dwarf star alloy, the densest material in the universe. The perfect prison. "But it still won't be enough!"
Location: New York. At the top of a skyscraper still being built, River Song walks worried among the building material, her face full of fear and also covered in tally marks. Something else moves among the cloth. A horrible finger, a suit, all glimpses of the Silence. River takes a pen, drawing two tally marks on her arm. "I see you."
Canton comes bursting in with armed agents, guns drawn, asking her to surrender. She babbles about how they're everywhere, across the whole country. The FBI agent replies sarcastically: of course, invisible aliens are invading America. But River knows it's worse than that. They've been here a long time, and America is occupied. It doesn't matter, of course, because Delaware has cornered her at last, and there's no way to escape. River just smiles knowingly at Canton, backs up, and drops gracefully out of a window. It's probably not the maddest thing she's done, nor the first (or last) time she does it either.
Location: On top of Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona. Rory runs desperately, his body covered in markings too. He is quickly surrounded by Canton's men. He's told to run — it'll look better if he's shot while running. Rory just stands there, on the brink of tears, when he's shot dead.
Location: Area 51. The black prison around the Doctor is nearly complete. Canton pulls in the body bags containing Amy and Rory and takes the time to goad and lecture the Doctor. His companions are captured and dead, River jumped off the 50th floor of a building and he is encased in the densest material in the known universe. Behind him, the door to the prison shuts. It's completely soundproof. "So I guess they won't be able to hear us."
The Doctor and Canton smile at each other. The Doctor slips out of his chains, and Amy and Rory claw their way out of the body bags. The Doctor leans on an invisible shape, snaps his finger, and the interior of the TARDIS bursts into view. They're all quickly ushered into the vehicle, but Canton still has questions: what about River, who dove off a building?
He lands the TARDIS sideways on the building, telling Rory and Amy to open the doors to the swimming pool. River gracefully turns her fall into a headfirst dive, dropping through the ship's doors with a splash. A few minutes later, the group reassembles on the TARDIS bridge, and they begin to collect information. Does the Doctor have a plan? He does indeed, and the TARDIS lands before Cape Canaveral, a rocket proudly filling the horizon. River is dubious. Apollo 11 is his plan?
We see a car driving through the rain as it pulls up at an old abandoned looking house. Inside are Canton and Amy, who hold up their hands and check something. With apparently nothing to worry about, Amy exits the car, with Canton following just behind.
Flashback to the TARDIS, where Canton's hand is stung by one of the Doctor's devices. He's dancing around, stinging everyone, much to their protest. He explains that it's a recorder, linked right to your brain so it will always pick up your words. You can activate it and record whatever you see when a Silent appears; your palm will blink red if you've left a message. Impressed, Canton straightens the Doctor's bowtie. Everyone stares at him. Canton sees that his hand blinks red.
Perturbed, he presses the message. It relays the last few minutes: Canton's shocked exclamation of "how did it get in here?", the Doctor telling him to turn around and straighten his bowtie... Canton looks back, and there the Silent is. Menacing as always. It's just a hologram, though, copied from the picture on Amy's phone. Nobody can remember what it looks like even after seeing it. The Doctor also explains that anything you're told to do when you see the alien will stick with you, as a form of post-hypnotic suggestion. That is how the Silence controls the world.
He drops Amy and Canton off to try to find where the unknown little girl was taken from, while the rest of them go off to NASA. At the orphanage, they discover that the place looks more and more like it belongs in a horror movie. The man running the place is confused and distracted, and doesn't even seem to know what year it is. On the wall, large red messages are scrawled; "LEAVE ME ALONE" and "GET OUT". Canton goes to talk to the man, while Amy begins investigating, briefly calling the Doctor (who's broken into Apollo 11) to say they think they've found the place. She wanders into an old dorm room where empty beds line the wall. The door closes behind her with a thud. She turns around quickly, desperately trying to open the door, which is locked. Then she notices that her palm is glowing red.
She listens to the message; they're here, they're asleep, just get out. She turns around quickly, and when her reflection is illuminated in the glass by lightning, she sees her entire face covered in black markings from her own pen. She turns around quickly and finds the Silence, hanging from the ceiling like bats, menacing even in sleep. She finally makes her escape, but the moment she's in the hallways, she shakes herself, unable to remember what just happened. She wanders down the hallways and sees a door. A hatch opens up; bright light shines through, framing the face of a woman with an eyepatch. "No, I think she's dreaming," the woman's voice says.
Amy runs up to it, just as the hatch closes. She opens the door but finds nothing but an child's empty room on the other side. Furthermore, there's nothing on the door but smooth metal. Perturbed, she wanders around. The desk is lined with photographs of a little girl, from every age from baby to toddler to six years old. And a picture of Amy, holding a newborn baby.
The astronaut comes into the room. Amy, now seriously frightened, begs for an explanation. She's sorry she tried to shoot the little girl, but she knows she shot — will shoot — the Doctor. The girl only asks once again to be saved, and then the Silence come into the room.
At NASA, the Doctor had been captured for breaking into Apollo 11, fiddling with the wiring and basically breaking the law. He claims that he's on a mission from the President, but his captors aren't exactly believing him. Until Nixon walks into the room, River and Rory at his sides. He congratulates the men for their good work and dedication to America, and says what fine work the Doctor is doing, even if he is confused by what exactly that work is. The Doctor is set free, and cheerfully leaves. Oh, and Rory manages to break a scale model of the lunar module and can't feign an American accent. (Or salute.)
Canton is in an office, asking the forgetful orphanage man questions. He barely seems to know why he's here. He knows that he must take care of the girl, because "that's important. Yes." He talks to someone through a crack in the door, but when Canton asks who, the man has forgotten what just happened. A Silent comes in, and Canton subtly turns on the recorder in his hand, and begins asking the creature questions. How long have they been here? Do they have weapons?
Turns out that they've been here for a long time. A long, long time. Since humans discovered fire, since we developed the wheel, they have been here, and have manipulated us since. They don't even need weapons. They just take the technology of whatever culture they're leeching off, and implant post-hypnotic suggestions to steer innovation into the right direction. And right now, what they need more than anything is a space suit, though it'll be a while before we find out why. So they steered humankind towards the Moon.
Canton hears Amy scream in the background, and decides that Americans do need weapons. He shoots the Silent and runs after Amy. He hears her screaming behind the door, and is about to break it down, before the Doctor appears and opens it with the sonic screwdriver. They burst through, but find Amy nowhere in sight, although her screams fill the whole room. The astronaut's spacesuit lies on the ground, ripped open. On the ground, a little red light flashes. They pulled the chip out of her hand, and the feed is still going live; they can hear Amy screaming and pleading. Rory vows that he will save her, and that she knows he will, because Amy should always know.
To track her down they investigate the spacesuit, which seems constructed as a life support system for a human girl, albeit one who is strong enough to break out of it herself. Rory, holding the chip, listens to Amy's screams, wishing he could help her. Now she's talking, as if she knows someone who's listening. She says she loves "you" — whom, Rory doesn't know — even though "you" think it should be the other one. But oh, what she would give to see his stupid face again! Her life was so horrible, so boring before he dropped out of the sky|||||
The Doctor comes to console him, saying that he's doing everything he can to find Amy, but if they don't defeat the Silence it could happen again. They have to drive the Romans out of Rome, figuratively. Of course, Rome fell, but then the Doctor knew that. He was there. But then again, so was Rory. He can still remember, all those years, waiting by the Pandorica for Amy. Not all the time, since he manages to lock the memories away when they're too painful. But 2000 years still rattle inside his brain.
Back in Area 51, the wounded Silent has been imprisoned in the Doctor's old cell. Canton has got a doctor to treat it, even though that doctor can't remember doing so. The Silent is confused. Why do they help him? Canton records everything on Amy's video phone as the creature rants, "You should kill us all on sight! But you won't remember."
Meanwhile, Amy is being kept hostage in a spaceship that looks suspiciously like the one from "The Lodger". The Silence say she's been there for "many days", but she can't remember any of it. One thing she does know is that they are in trouble now, because wait until they see who's coming. True to her words, she's barely finished speaking before the magnificent "VWORP, VWORP" of the TARDIS fills the air. The Doctor, Rory and River spill out, confident as ever. The Doctor boasts to the Silence that if they attack, River will shoot them dead, if she isn't too busy flirting with him, of course. Have they seen what's on telly? It's the Moon landing, about to occur in less than five minutes. One of the most famous pieces of film in human history, so famous that every human from this day forward will look back on it in with pride and awe.
On the television, Neil Armstrong steps out. The Doctor calls Canton, who connects Amy's phone to a device. On the screen appears the film of the captured Silent: "You should kill us all on sight!" It's repeated and repeated, while across the world everyone sees the clip, promptly forgetting it. But the suggestion remains. Everyone has been ordered by post-hypnotic suggestion to kill any Silent they see. The Silence signed their own death warrant.
Of course, they don't take to that very kindly, and promptly begin to attack. River, of course, begins unleashing hell onto the Silence and solidifies her status as the Resident Badass, while Rory desperately tries to break Amy free of her shackles. It's no use, and Amy tells him to get his "big stupid face" out of there. Suddenly, Rory realises that it was him she was talking about. The Doctor releases Amy using his screwdriver, and they make their escape under the cover of River's gun.
Canton is dropped off again in Nixon's office, and the Doctor tells Nixon that Canton wants to get married. Nixon is quite happy to defy people's expectations of him and be open-minded towards Canton. He suspects that Canton's partner is black. He didn't expect that it would also be a man. The moon is far enough for now, Nixon comments with some shock, and Canton's marriage plans will have to be postponed a few more decades.
Once in the TARDIS, Amy tells Rory that he's a moron: of course it's him she loves. He challenges her about the "dropped out of the sky" line, and she tells him she was talking metaphorically.
They drop River off at the Stormcage prison, and she and the Doctor flirt some more. Finally, River pulls him in for a kiss. He reciprocates after a moment, looking rather flustered and confused, and extremely undecided on where to put his hands. (He settles on hiding them behind his back.) River says he's acting like they've never done that before. "We haven't," he replies. As the Doctor backs away in the TARDIS, he says there's a first time for everything. The ship dematerialises, and River simply looks mournful. "And a last."
On-board, the Doctor and Amy have a heartfelt conversation. How is she? Amy says she can't quite remember everything (the most significant "everything" being what she saw in the child's room), but the Doctor isn't talking about that. Her pregnancy. Then Amy says that it was a false alarm, but that's still not what the Doctor is talking about. Why did she tell him, but not Rory? Below, Rory listens via the microphone to Amy's voice. Amy explains that she was afraid that having done all this time travel while pregnant would affect the fetus. What if it had three heads? Or a Time Head? So that's what she wanted to ask a few months ago.
"Oi, stupid face." Rory looks surprised, and comes out of hiding. Turns out they knew he was listening, and he really shouldn't spy on them. Rory accepts that, but come on, he's a nurse. He's good with pregnancies. Glad that they're all settled, the Doctor asks, what should they do next? Find the mysterious little girl? Or go and have wacky adventures? He settles for wacky adventures, pausing just briefly to have the TARDIS scan Amy to see if she's pregnant. The screen says positive. Then negative. Then positive again. Positivenegativepositivenegative...
"Six Months Later." Cut to a dark back alley, where a homeless man wanders around looking for food. The girl from the astronaut suit appears out of the shadows, clutching her chest. The man looks concerned, and asks the little girl if she's all right. She's just dying. But that's okay, because she can fix it.
She holds out her hands, which begin to glow. The man runs away in a panic as the girl's whole form is engulfed in orange light, and she explodes with the full force of regeneration.
Tropes:
- Action Girl: River unleashes hell onto the Silence, killing all of them.
- Action Prologue: Our heroes running for their lives through scenic parts of America.
- Alien Invasion: "It's not an invasion. It's an occupation."
- Alone-with-Prisoner Ploy: At Area 51, Canton walls the Doctor up in a "perfect prison" from which no sound or particle can escape. Which is what the Doctor wants, and what Canton wants to.
- Ancient Conspiracy: The Silence have been secretly influencing humanity "since the wheel and the fire" so that a spacesuit suited for their needs could be developed.
- Apocalyptic Log: The messages from Amy's transmitter.
- Arc Words: "Silence will fall."
- Area 51: Where the Doctor is kept prisoner.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: River and the Doctor take this position in the climax to defeat the Silence, except River is the only one shooting. The Doctor is just pointing his screwdriver, though the fact the Silents slowly stop draining electricity from the walls implies he was somehow blocking the current.
- Badass Back: River points her gun at a Silence that was sneaking up on her, just by judging Rory's shock reaction to it.
- Badass Boast:The Doctor: You're building me the perfect prison. And it still won't be enough.
Silent: This world is ours. We have ruled it since the wheel and the fire. We have no need of weapons.- Ultimately subverted in the Silent's case, in that Canton proves the Silent wrong literally a second later by shooting it.
Canton: Welcome to America. - Badass Bystander: The entire human race ends up becoming this due to the "you should kill us all on sight" command.
- Batman Gambit:
- That Silent really should have chosen its words more carefully.
- River's "suicide" can be seen this way. She jumps with the knowledge that Canton will tell the Doctor what she did, thus enabling the Doctor to save her through time travel. This is a habit of hers.
- Beam Spam: River goes Death Blossom at the finale.
- Been There, Shaped History: So Neil Armstrong's famous speech "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", even though he claimed he said "one small step for a man". Turns out that was the Doctor's doing. The Doctor tampered with the broadcast and inserted the Silent's video recording in as a post-hypnotic suggestion, causing a scuff on the video that madethe "a" inaudible.
- Betty and Veronica: The Doctor and Rory again. Amy choses Rory again.
- Beyond the Impossible: River kills a Silence with an Offhand Backhand even though she can't know it's there.
- Big Bad: The Silents. The Eyepatch Lady is more of an Outside-Context Problem at this point.
- Big Damn Heroes: The TARDIS and crew arrive right in the Silence's inner sanctum just when they think they've won.
- Big Damn Kiss: River takes the Doctor by surprise with one. In his personal timeline, it's their first.
- Bond One-Liner:
- "Welcome to America."
- "Love a tomb."
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Poor Dr. Renfrew, because his mind was continually addled by the Silence ordering him around. He even tries to warn himself with writing on the walls, but he doesn't understand the message.
- Buffy Speak: The Doctor did a "clever thing" to Apollo 11.
- Call-Back:
- Canton's shooting of the Silent proves the truth behind the Doctor's fear from the previous episode, that yes, Americans do think they can just shoot you.
- As the Doctor remarks, the Silence's ship is the same sort seen abandoned in "The Lodger".
- Casual Danger Dialogue: River and the Doctor repeatedly do this.Amy: Is this really important flirting? Because I feel I should be higher on the list.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Amy's phone from the previous episode is used to generate a Silent hologram and learn about them. And, also, to record a captured Silent inadvertently dooming its own race.
- The TARDIS' invisibility circuit, which was introduced in the previous episode. It ends up coming in handy when the Doctor and Canton need a way to sneak the TARDIS into the military's dwarf star alloy prison.
- Ceiling Cling: The Silence hang upside-down from the ceiling in the orphanage, apparently sleeping.
- Combat Pragmatist: Canton wisely shot one of the Silence when it started bragging how tough they were.
- Continuity Nod:
- The Doctor uses the Silence's Exact Words against them, a trick he picked up from the Daleks.
- The Doctor tells the Silence he's going to give them a chance to surrender and flee, then tells them he's just joking, because it isn't Christmas. Also likely a reference to "A Christmas Carol".
- The Doctor flashes back to the phrase "Silence will fall" said by Prisoner Zero in "The Eleventh Hour" as well as the appearance of the control room in "The Lodger".
- Flashing back to an arc phrase being a device previously used in Series 1 with "Bad Wolf".
- Canton boasts the Doctor will be contained in the perfect prison, which is the same way the Pandorica was described.
- The prison is made of bricks of dwarf-star alloy, as was Rorvik's slave ship in the Fourth Doctor story "Warriors' Gate". It was used for its property of being able to contain time-sensitives (Tharils in that case). The same material was also used to make the chains with which the Tenth Doctor bound up Father of Mine in "The Family of Blood".
- Rory remembers his 2000-year penance as the Centurion guarding the Pandorica, and tells the Doctor he is doing the same thing now, persuading him to go and rescue Amy.
- A character is in an old, abandoned house whose walls contain messages, as in "Blink". Speaking of which, in that episode Martha mentioned that she and the Doctor had gone to see the Moon landing, which the climax of this episode revolves around.
- As in the Eighth Doctor book Alien Bodies, one of the TARDIS crew jumps out of a window in a tall building and relies on the TARDIS being in the right place and time to catch them. River seems to be making a habit of this.
- River asks whether what they are hearing from the device in Amy's hand is a recording, fearing that if it works like the devices in "Silence in the Library", Amy is dead.
- The Doctor mentions he was there when the Roman Empire fell; we know he was at least there when Nero burned it down.
- River tells the Doctor that he should use his sonic screwdriver to put up some cabinets. In "The Doctor Dances", the Doctor defends his sonic screwdriver by saying "Never had a long night? Never had a lot of cabinets to put up?"
- River swan-dives into the swimming pool. We get to see the swimming pool in the first episode of "The Invasion of Time". Even better, it contained Leela.
- The reason the girl was calling Nixon is because the alien tech in her suit had a default setting to broadcast distress calls to the highest authority it could find. This is similar to other concepts Moffat has used (such as the om-com in "The Empty Child", the Clockwork Robots' behaviour in "The Girl in the Fireplace", and the spaceship in "The Lodger"), where apparently nonsensical behaviour is explained by malfunctioning alien tech being Literal-Minded.
- Cool Car: The Jeeps.
- Cool Shades: Canton wore a rather nice (and intimidating) pair during his faked executions of the Doctor's companions.
- Cool Spaceship: The Saturn V rocket and Apollo 11.
- Creepy Child: The girl, but she isn't necessarily bad, just Forced into Evil.
- Damsel in Distress: Amy is kidnapped, and thanks to the nano-recorder they leave behind, the others can hear her calling for help.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mark Sheppard, as usual:[Amy and Rory pop out of body bags]
Rory: These things could really do with some air holes!
Canton: Never had any complaints before. - Distressed Dude: The Doctor is chained up in Area 51.
- Don't Be Ridiculous:River: Apollo 11 is your secret weapon?
The Doctor: No, no; it's not Apollo 11. That would be silly. It's Neil Armstrong's foot. - Eagleland: There is an awful lot of gunplay in this episode.
- Easily Conquered World: The Silence's ability to mind-wipe people meant that this essentially happened. They didn't even have to bring weapons.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: How do we know that the little girl is regenerating in New York City? Why look, the Empire State Building is right behind her!
- Exact Words:
- The Doctor assures Nixon that people will never forget him...
Nixon: I'm a president at the beginning of his time. Dare I ask? Will I be remembered?
The Doctor: Oh Dicky. Tricky Dicky. They're never going to forget you. Say hi to David Frost for me.
Nixon: David Frost? [he doesn't look reassured by this]- The Silents end up defeated when one of them proclaims "You should kill us all on sight!" unaware it was being filmed, which then becomes a post-hypnotic suggestion to the entire human race when the Doctor broadcasts it over the Moon landing.
- Canton was kicked out of the FBI for wanting to get married... to a man.
- Face–Heel Turn: In the time between "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon", Canton switched from Doctor-Ally to Doctor-Hunter. He's faking it.
- Fake Defector: Canton is only pretending to have turned against our heroes at the beginning.
- Faking the Dead: Canton smuggles Amy and Rory into the Doctor's cell in body bags.
- First Kiss/Last Kiss: River kisses the Doctor and he's surprised because it's the first time. River, from her prespective, sees it as routine, which means it's her last. (Although, not necessarily. Their relationship's funny like that.)
- Flirting Under Fire: The Doctor and River, to Amy's annoyance.
- Foreshadowing:
- When Amy and the Doctor talk about the fact that she thought she was pregnant, she says that one of the reasons she didn't tell Rory was because she thought that the baby might have been affected by their travelling on the TARDIS.
Amy: I didn't want to tell Rory his kid might have a time head or something.- "(River) is going to kill at least the first three of you, plus him behind." Sure enough, River's last shot is an Offhand Backhand at a Silence standing directly behind her.
- The Greys: The Silence are basically just your standard Greys mixed with pure horror. They have already invaded, a long time ago, they came from another world, they look alien-ish and that alien superiority.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: We still don't know why the Silence monkeyed with the TARDIS in series 5. In fact, by all accounts, it might not even have happened for them yet.
- Historical Domain Character: President Richard Nixon.
- Historical In-Joke:
- The Doctor tells Nixon to tape everything that happens in his office as it's the only way to be sure he hasn't been compromised by the Silence. He kept following the Doctor's advice even after the episode.
- He also tells him about all the horrible things in the universe that would love to destroy Earth, and that we will never truly be safe. Nixon was quite well known for being paranoid.
- His parting words to Nixon: "Say hi to David Frost for me."
- The audio glitch in the Moon landing transmission of "One small step for (a) man..." was caused by the Doctor splicing in his secret message. You don't remember the Silent's "you should kill us all on sight" message when you view the landing transmission on YouTube because you're supposed to forget completely about them the moment you look away.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Silents have been controlling humanity using hypnotic suggestion, which the Doctor ends up using to persuade humanity to kill them.
- Hollywood Density: The dwarf star alloy is said to be the densest material in the universe. Fair enough, white dwarf stars are among the densest objects in the universe, only beaten by neutron stars and black holes. So there's no way two people could move those bricks, as they would weigh thousands of tons.
- Human Notepad: The tally marks used to note any encounters.
- Kerb-Stomp Battle: River vs. the Silence. Game, set, match.
- Kill on Sight: And thanks to the Silence, they do.
- Leitmotif:
- "Hail to the Chief" plays whenever Richard Nixon comes into view. Made all the more hilarious by the reactions it elicits.
- The music played at the end as the girl regenerates is the same as the music for the Doctor's Viking Funeral in "The Impossible Astronaut".
- Literal-Minded: When Rory hears Amy talking about how the person she loved 'fell out of the sky' into her life, he assumed she meant the Doctor. Amy clarifies that she was talking about him, metaphorically. Though, given the state she was in, she can hardly be blamed for not mincing her words.
- Meaningful Name: Renfrew → Renfield, the brainwashed sycophant to Dracula in Bram Stoker's opus.
- The Men in Black: The episode opens with our heroes being hunted down by government agents in black suits and dark glasses and taken to Area 51 to keep the aliens secret. The Silence themselves have many MIB-ish qualities, and can probably be assumed to be the in-universe inspiration for the trope.
- Military Salute: Going hand-in-hand with his inability to fake an American accent, Rory — dressed as a Federal functionary, when Nixon arrives to release the Doctor from NASA security — salutes the scientists using the British style of saluting, not the American style.
- When President Nixon emerges from the cube in Area 51, the guards immediately snap to attention and salute. Being Air Force personnel, they are uncovered (no hat) and indoors; the Army would do the same, but not the Navy or Marines.
- Mind Screw: The Eyepatch Lady.
- Mysterious Waif: The girl in the astronaut suit is hinted to possibly be Amy's daughter, and then regenerates at the end of the episode.
- Nightmare Face: The Silents.Amy: You're ugly. Has anyone ever mentioned that to you?
- Noodle Incident: Apparently the TARDIS team scouted every state in the three months they were running from the FBI. We still don't know how long the Doctor was a prisoner, how he got the TARDIS there... and why was Rory at a dam, of all places?
- Note to Self:
- Dr. Renfrew leaves himself some, but doesn't understand them.
- The Doctor and his companions have crystals in their palms allowing them to leave quick notes and warnings about what they will soon forget.
- Not That Kind of Doctor: River Song is a doctor of archaeology, not medicine.
- Offhand Backhand: River shoots a Silent without turning her head.Rory: What sort of doctor are you?
River: Archaeology. Love a tomb.- Which is something of a subtle
Moment of Awesome when you realise she wouldn't have known about the Silence behind her: she made that shot just from watching Rory's reaction to it.
- Which is something of a subtle
- Oh, Crap!:
- The Silence have a truly epic moment when they realise that they have effectively written their own death warrant as a result of the Doctor's plan.The Doctor:I think the word you're looking for right now is... "Oops".
- When River realizes that she and the Doctor just shared his first kiss with her. Thus, it's supposedly her last with him.
- The Silence have a truly epic moment when they realise that they have effectively written their own death warrant as a result of the Doctor's plan.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Rory cannot hide his English accent when he tells the scientists "America salutes you". He follows this statement with a salute... of the British variety. Check the picture on the Military Salute page.
- Orphanage of Fear: It might be if there were any kids. As it stands there's one little girl, one poor guy whose brain has been wiped so often he doesn't know what the year is (or what accent he's supposed to have) and a small horde of malevolent aliens.
- Paranoia Fuel: In-universe. There could be any number of Silence in the room with you right now and you wouldn't even know it. The fact that they are not in any way invisible and can simply hide in plain sight, lurking around with their creepy non-faces and enormous hands that are too big to fit into those suits and reading over your shoulder right now is bloody terrifying.
- Powered Armour: The space suit is really a hodgepodge of alien tech designed to enhance the abilities of anyone wearing it.
- Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Rory gets a pair to go with his suit.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Unlike his usual villainous appearances, Richard Nixon is depicted as one in the series, trusting the Doctor entirely and going along with his advice despite the occasional jabs and the fact that the Doctor is eccentric to put it mildly, only asking the Doctor how he's remembered. He's also given excellent reason for his infamous paranoia. He's even willing to intervene on Canton's behalf, overcoming his own prejudices to support his mixed marriage and intervene on his behalf... until he finds out that Canton's partner is a black man. Even then, all he does is say, after a moment of shock, that perhaps the Moon is far enough for now (which, while a little sad, is considerably more reasonable a response than you'd expect in the 1960s).
- Refuge in Audacity: There's nothing like coming out to Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, isn't that right, Canton?
- Room Full of Crazy: All the "GET OUT NOW" messages scrawled across the walls in the orphanage. Judging by the colour, some might even be written in blood.
- Running Gag:
- Whenever the Doctor or the people working with him are in trouble with the personnel at the base, they bring out Richard Nixon to tell them to reconsider their actions. Even when he steps out of an inescapable prison without being seen walking in.
- River confidently making a seemingly suicidal jump, only to be caught by the TARDIS.The Doctor: She does that.
- Sequel Hook: The little girl is still out there and may be a Time Lord and/or Amy's daughter, and we don't know what the Silence wanted from either her or Amy. Meanwhile, not even the TARDIS can decide whether Amy is pregnant or not.
- Scenery Porn: Amy and Rory choose amazingly picturesque places to get captured by the FBI.
- Ship Tease: River×Doctor continues from previous episodes.
- Shout-Out:
- When River falls off the skyscraper, she is caught by the TARDIS, which is parked sideways on the wall. This sequence is shot the same way as Superman catching the wall-climbing thief in the 1978 Superman film.
- River's tendency to leap out of buildings (or airlocks) in general due to knowing she will be caught is a classic Lois Lane trick.
- The post-hypnotic suggestions are very much in the mould of The Manchurian Candidate.
- The Doctor's idea to implant transmitters in his companions' hands is reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind.
- The ending in the alleyway is shot like the beginning of The Terminator.
- The entire orphanage scene was very similar to The Shining.
- People suffering frequent short-term memory loss and scribbling notes on their bodies to help them remember, just like in Memento.
- River says she is an archaeologist while shooting everything in sight. She also loves a tomb.
- The Silence have been controlling human evolution since the dawn of time and are now pushing space travel forward.
- Also reminiscent of the Tralfamadorians' (less sinister) manipulation of Earth history in Vonnegut's novel The Sirens of Titan (in which memory erasure figures prominently, also).
- Just the name Renfrew, which sounds a lot like another poor bugger brainwashed into serving the Big Bad.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: A Silent is bragging about how tough his species is and how humanity is nothing but cattle to them, and Canton just shoots him.
- Soft Water: The TARDIS' swimming pool, after River Song's falling stunt in New York. Of course, it is the swimming pool of an advanced alien, so regular rules might not apply.
- Spectacular Spinning: Eventually River is just twirling around and firing seemingly at random. But still hitting her targets.
- Spiritual Successor: Canton is one to Jack Harkness. Both are rogue-ish, non-hetero, wisecracking, gun-toting guys with American accents who are steadfastly on the Doctor's side.
- Stable Time Loop: Subtle. In the previous episode, the Doctor is disdainful towards Richard Nixon, because of things like Watergate
. It turns out he's indirectly responsible for Watergate by encouraging Nixon to be paranoid and suspicious of everyone because of things like the Silence. - Stock Footage: Of the Moon landing.
- Straight Gay: Canton wants to marry a black person, who also happens to be a man.
- Suicidal "Gotcha!": River jumps off a New York skyscraper, apparently to her death... and is caught by the TARDIS.
- Suicidal Overconfidence: For a species that can easily be taken out by a handgun, the Silence are extremely confident they have no need of weapons. This turns out to be their downfall.
- That Came Out Wrong: Amy might not have known Rory was listening, but her poor choice of idiom when talking about how much she loved Rory does not go unnoticed. When you know someone who literally dropped out of the sky, using that as an idiom when speaking about another person might cause confusion/heartbreak, yes?
- Tailor-Made Prison: The Doctor's prison cell is made of the toughest stuff around. Nothing can be transmitted in or out. Which also means no one can listen in.
- Time-Passage Beard: The Doctor's been chained up in Area 51 for three months, and hasn't been allowed to shave.
- Time Skip: This episode picks up three months after the previous episode finished. The final moments in New York is six months after the main events.
- Trigger-Happy: River, and Canton and the Americans in general, are quick to shoot. The last two are carrying over the Running Gag from the previous episode.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Doctor using post-hypnotic suggestion to recruit much of the human race to kill the alien threat.
- Wham Episode: It is implied that the girl is Amy's daughter, and she regenerates at the end of the episode.
- Wham Line:
- The alien invaders of the week finally reveal their name, and an implicit connection to the previous story arc:
Silence, Doctor. We are the Silence...and silence will fall.- For the Silents and what the Doctor has made every human into.Silent: You should kill us all on sight.
- Rory and the Doctor are talking about the Silence and there's this bit, revealing that Rory remembers his entire time as the Lone Centurion, albeit keeping them suppressed.
Doctor: This is kicking the Romans out of Rome.Rory: Rome fell.Doctor: I know, I was there.Rory: So was I. - Wham Shot: In the last scene, the little girl tells the tramp she's dying, but she can fix that. Then her hands start glowing in a very familiar way...
- What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to poor Dr. Renfrew? Is he still in that orphanage? And did he ever catch that broadcast and if so, how's that skinny-addled bugger going to kill all those Silence "on sight" anyhow?
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: The orphanage director, Dr. Renfrew, is only kind of Southern. This could be explained by him being a Southerner who faked a Yank accent for part of his life, and the brain damage keeps him from remembering which one to use and/or how to use it correctly. More likely, it seems to be a British-Canadian actor's attempt at a Louisiana/Cajun drawl. Which you don't usually find in central Florida, where Cape Canaveral is. Poor mind broken Dr. Renfrew.
- The Whole World Is Watching: The Doctor takes advantage of the record-setting Apollo 11 broadcast to embed a subliminal message against the Monster of the Week.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Canton firmly believes in this method. See a Silent? Shoot while it talks.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Trope name used directly. The little girl would have been a lot more helpful if she had given more information to the President than just "There's a monster behind you", and "There's a spaceman trying to eat me." However, unusually for this trope, the President does completely believe that there is something very wrong, since the little girl is somehow able to call his personal phone wherever he is.
- You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: The Doctor when he orders the destruction of the Silence, although in a more jovial manner than might be expected.
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