Day of the Moon

This episode opens with a complete waste of time where they pretend they're on the run and the Doctor has been captured and imprisoned in Area 51. It's not at all clear why they felt the need for this ruse. There doesn't seem to be any reason for it at all, other than to waste some time.

After they're done wasting time, Mr FBI and Amy visit an abandoned orphanarium that's full of aliens. It should have been really creepy and frightening. I'm sure if someone had described it to me beforehand, I would have expected it to be scary. But it just wasn't. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that we knew from the start that no one was in any danger. Amy's trapped in a room full of aliens, will she escape? Yes, obviously.

In another context, I feel that the bit where Amy sees her reflection in the window and suddenly her face is covered with marks showing that she's seen memory-wiping aliens would be really effective, but in this? I felt nothing. There were also a few other things that seem like they should have been creepy, like the woman with the eyepatch and the door that had a window in it and then suddenly didn't, but they just didn't have any impact.

And the plot is resolved in a terribly lame way. Awfully convenient how that captured alien happened to say exactly the right phrase for the plan to work, even though there was no real reason for him to say that. Also, the way they spliced the footage in doesn't really work. Sure, for video it's fine, you see the alien and then forget it, but what about audio recordings? If you're not looking at an alien (or a picture of one) when you hear it, you'll remember it. And that's the sort of thing people will notice.

And they couldn't even keep straight how the aliens' ability worked for the entire length of the episode. At one point River shoots an alien that's approaching from behind her. Even though she should not be able to remember that she's fighting aliens. How did she do that? Oh wait, I know, she did it by being totally awesome to the max, just like how she can fly the TARDIS better than the Doctor. God, what a fucking awful character.

And that scene at the end where she kisses him? Words cannot express the disgust I feel at that.

Then there's the girl in the space suit. She had absolutely no relevance to the plot of this story, despite taking quite a huge amount of the focus during both episodes. And she's Amy's daughter? But Amy is both pregnant and not pregnant at the same time? And she's got access to regeneration technology? If that's even technological any more, maybe it's been retconned into a natural Time Lord ability, in which case, the girl might be a Time Lord for some reason? The resolution of this is going to make me very angry, I can tell.

Next week, pirates I guess. And a mermaid? I dunno, at least it won't have River Song in it.