h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Moffat certainly doesn't lack ambition does he?

I din't think it'll be permanent, they'll jump time tracks or something, but killing off the Doctor within the first 10 minutes of the new series was certainly bold. The age of the Doctor was a nice clue, but one I expected to be drawn out longer.

The stuff with River was simply incredible. I know a lot of people don't care for her but I don't care, I find her to be the best creation in the Whoniverse other than the Doctor himself. Her conversation about moving away from the Doctor had me in tears and makes me think (or really hope) Moffat will leave Silence in the Library alone and give River her end as we've already seen it. At the same time there was awesome stuff with the Doctor laughing off the suggestion that he trust River - that was a fantastically tense scene.

While there was still the combination of very dark drama and humour, it doesn't seem as forced as in the past. The guard's panicked call: "She's doing it again - Professor River Song is packing and saying she's going to some planet called America" right through to the very end.

Rory and Amy were particularly strong, right from the off. I liked that they'd left the Doctor for a while and returned to domestic bliss which makes me confident we won't have too much Doctor-Amy stuff. I was particularly happy that Rory was shown to have a particular role within the group: Canton was entrusted to Rory because they know Rory to be the most sympathetic and human member of the group. Amy was just superb, easily her best performance so far, and even as a gay bloke I can appreciate she looked bloomin' good. Mark Sheppard was good too, but I expected that - he's one of my favourite character actors and I loved Badger and Romo Lampkin.

I'm glad they didn't overload us with series set-up. They introduced us to the Silence (who were creepy as hell) and left it at that for now. Meant the episode was paced beautifully and didn't get bogged down.

I cannot wait until next week.

A stonking episode how people could call it boring and slow..OK so it wasn;t 45minutes of running down corridors but it had tension, story arc, hints at other things, the explanation about River and the Dr going in opposite directions.

It does see some people can't cope with a proper story arc...the RTD ones never really had a true story arc to them.

Didn't click the aliens were the Silence...did I miss something there or is that an assumption on peoples part or a proper spoiler?

war it just me or did the inside of the ship look similar to the crashed vessel on the roof of james cordens flat from last series?????

Oh yes, it did indeed...shivers with antici....pation...

I think I'm one of those that can cope with story arc etc being a Babylon fan...it seems unless a story is wham bam and done these days then it's boring. Ho hum...they might realise it's actually a good thing to have lose threads and unanswered questions here and there...

>>Didn't click the aliens were the Silence...did I miss something there or is that an assumption on peoples part or a proper spoiler?

The alien was listed as "The Silent" in Radio Times (and probably elsewhere).

>>war it just me or did the inside of the ship look similar to the crashed vessel on the roof of james cordens flat from last series?????

Not similar, Taff. Pretty much identical.

buget cuts.........re using old sets.....next it will be tom baker wobbly sets

Thanks hygienicdispenser, I think...though I wonder whether that was Moffat's choice to 'ruin' part of the reveal whenever it occurs...sort of reduces some of the tension for us who avoid any spoiler stuff.. they could have simply called it the alien.

It does open up a new area of thought. Should "Silence will fall" actually be "Silents will fall"?

Though both phrases are still equally obscure.

Kind of enjoyed it. Will be interesting to see how the ratings go this series because that seemed a bit too deep, dull and slow for the average Saturday night viewer. RTD was much more populist. Not saying I don't like Moffat's work, I do; and RTD was getting wearing by the 4th series.

Is it too obvious to think that it's actually River in the spacesuit who shoots the Doctor? About halfway through Amy(?) asks her who did you kill? No answer. Then River says hers and The Doctor's lives are going in different directions in which case by the time she's in jail he'll just have died? I can't quite get my head around their wibbly, wobbly timey wimey stuff ...

Interesting comment on the previous page by FerretBadger along the lines of "Hope they don't tackle the regneration issue too early or too late in the series. They could have so much fun with the Doctor worrying about his death". Seems like they tackled it early, yet are going to have some fun with it!

Wouldn't River remember if it was her in the astronauts suit? She seemed genuinely surprised when the astronaut showed up and killed the Doctor. Also why would she try and shoot herself? I do wonder what she meant when she said "of course" when she couldn't harm the astronaut, though.

Good point ... but why let logic get in the way of a good twist ... easily explained by having her memory wiped during sentencing.

My initial thought was that the spacesuit person was the Doctor himself ... but then the way he was killed looked much more like the way the Silent killed Joy(?) in the lavs.

<raging against the dying of the light


Well, no because remember that River and the Dr have to synchronise where they are in each others time lines so they don't say any spoilers.

When is River in the space suit in the Forest of the Dead? Does the Dr know her at that point? What happens at the end of that episode?

Quite possibly it is all 'too complicated' for the normal viewer but only because they no longer need to engage their brain for TV programmes...I think that hare programme on before it shows just what the BBC are aiming for when it comes to levels of intellect. If Moffatt can at least get people thinking again during TV programmes it will be a bonus. He's not lowering his writing to their level he's throwing down a ladder to climb up to his.

But it can't be the murder River is imprisoned for, as the speculation seems to be, because that's in the past of her personal timeline - at the start of the episode she's in the Stormcage facility, presumably for the murder of the 'greatest man she's ever known'.

If we assume the greatest man River has ever known is indeed the Doctor, this can't be the time she kills him and gets jailed. Though there's nothing to rule out that she doesn't kill him twice or, as BBS hypothesises, she's had her memory of the incident wiped.

Argh, I've just though of a third possibility. The episode starts in 2011 and the murder of the Doctor takes place then. This is *before* River's time so maybe she was jailed for this incident and had her memory wiped to forget it. Timey-wimey stuff - it's making my head hurt!

Indeed yes, head-hurty...

A brilliant episode I thought! Here's my take on it: http://wp.me/pLq5j-9N

Some good points being raised here too, especially about it being River in the suit and the "of course" line. As with all of Moffat's plots though it's unlikely to be as obvious as it seems. Very excited for the next episode, just hope I'm by a tv to actually see it.

Galigan, great review...and the list of stoking lines shows how dense the dialogue was.

This line:
“Fellas the guns, really? I just walked into the highest security office in the United States, parked a big blue box on the rug, and you think you can just shoot me?“

Reminds me of Lucius Fox's statement to the account Coleman Reese in the Dark Knight.

"Let me get this straight: You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck."

Brilliant stuff.

POSSIBLE SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO DON'T WATCH "NEXT TIME"




This episode was "The Impossible Astronaut" ... in the next time there seems to be markings on the faces of certain characters reminiscent of those on Toby in "The Impossible Planet" story back in season 2.


Anyone?

That gets explained a bit if you look at the clips on Doctor Who website. Though, as it says on old maps, there be spoilers.


Geggs

Best theory of Sunday ...

River says her life and the Doctors are going in opposite directions.

- The Doctor first meets River at the end of her life.
- Therefore River first meets the Doctor at the end of his life.
- We've seen the person in the spacesuit is a young girl. So if that happened to be a young River then she would be the one who kills him on her first meeting with her.

If you assume Old River knows pretty much everything else but is concealing it to avoid spoilers, it pretty much works.
- shoots at astronaut but deliberately misses.
- tells Amy not to kill her because she knows the effect.
- doesn't let on about why she's in prison.

So the question I now pose is ... how does this setup get a reboot for the regenerations?