The Impossible Astronaut – theregenerations

# Article 1 — Series 6, Episode 1: “The Impossible Astronaut”

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[The Impossible Astronaut/Day Of The Moon | Doctor Who Magazine 541](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/nqu5V4NoYgWDtNpaktcIfc2NpaWCY6g9EWHDqpRhJuamd_7yeRLcVbvdhXuV9vOP0JTt_KeJPxPHOcqdyqUDiHAdMuI1lRGUUmma0KGOtgHe-lm7DPJ9ZHacWff8ncZAtWti4G8jN37ZERVA4okuROLdrsOou8JBHJRvCTiF7cE?purpose=inline)

[The Impossible Astronaut (Doctor Who) – The Doctor Who Site](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/hr1xrsCanbXayWUKfRyqDjnj3XcjkrV8K2w1VE9NDrBCvAYaAoCNGiutqtgik3nyVtX1dg6Hta8XwjAMJFT6LutTzpSERgdpBaPtlEv3A_1geuy4II1AuDt6Dnpbg4mDFg1noxe_iPl7zZjjOf26pGSbQyXdmnYMiuGYaqAf07M?purpose=inline)

First broadcast: 23 April 2011 · Written by Steven Moffat · Directed by Toby Haynes

Original UK audience: 8.86 million consolidated viewers\
Appreciation Index: 88\
My rating: To be judged below — but this is a seriously ambitious season opener.

After the fairy-tale wonder of Series 5 and the festive fantasy of A Christmas Carol, Doctor Who returns with something altogether stranger. “The Impossible Astronaut” opens not with a monster chasing someone through a corridor, but with a death: the Eleventh Doctor, shot beside a lake in Utah, apparently killed in front of his closest friends.

And then, almost immediately, the episode complicates everything we think we have seen.

Steven Moffat’s first episode of Series 6 is a confident, occasionally bewildering blend of science-fiction conspiracy thriller, alien horror and emotional mystery. It takes Matt Smith’s Doctor, Amy Pond, Rory Williams and River Song into 1969 America, brings in a mysterious former FBI agent, and introduces an enemy whose defining power is that you cannot reliably remember encountering it.

It is an episode that asks its audience to pay attention. It also asks us to trust that the answers will eventually come. Whether that confidence feels exhilarating or frustrating depends partly on how much you enjoy Doctor Who when it turns into a puzzle box.

## 1. A genuinely shocking opening

The opening scene is one of the boldest choices the revived series had made at that point. The Doctor’s friends gather by a lake, and an astronaut emerges from the water. A shot rings out, and the Doctor falls. The episode does not initially treat this as a dream, a fake-out or a harmless bit of time-travel trickery. It gives the moment space to land.

That matters because the Doctor is usually the person who escapes. He may be captured, cornered, exhausted or apparently defeated, but viewers instinctively expect him to find a clever way out. Seeing him die in front of Amy, Rory and River temporarily removes that certainty.

The scene also establishes the season’s central question: how can the Doctor be dead in the future when he is still travelling with his friends in the present?

Moffat has always enjoyed stories in which chronology becomes part of the mystery. Here, however, the trick is more emotionally direct than a complicated timeline for its own sake. Amy and Rory are not merely trying to solve an impossible event. They are trying to understand what it means that they have witnessed the death of someone they love and then been asked to carry on travelling with a version of him who knows nothing about it.

The contrast between the opening and the scenes that follow is particularly effective. After the shock, the Doctor appears in a much more relaxed mood, meeting his companions at a diner and inviting them on another adventure. The audience knows something terrible is waiting for him. The Doctor himself does not.

That dramatic irony gives ordinary moments an unsettling edge. A joke can suddenly feel ominous. A casual remark about the future can sound like a warning.

The episode is not subtle about wanting viewers to ask questions, but it understands that a good mystery needs an emotional centre. Here, that centre is the uncomfortable gap between what the Doctor knows and what his friends have already seen.

## 2. Welcome to 1969: Doctor Who goes cinematic

[pocketmags.com](https://pocketmags.com/de/doctor-who-magazine/541/articles/the-impossible-astronaut-day-of-the-moon?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

One of the episode’s most immediately noticeable changes is its scale. Series 5 had given the Eleventh Doctor a storybook atmosphere, with fairytale imagery, eccentric characters and the sense that every adventure might be a bedtime story gone gloriously wrong. “The Impossible Astronaut” keeps the oddness but swaps the storybook for a conspiracy thriller.

The American setting is central to that change. The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River are summoned to the United States by mysterious blue envelopes, and their investigation draws them into the world of President Richard Nixon, NASA and a strange child who appears to be in danger. The story evokes the paranoia of Cold War-era science fiction, with government corridors, secretive officials and the looming historical backdrop of the Apollo space programme.

It is a clever setting for Doctor Who. The space race was already a real-world story about humanity trying to reach beyond its limits, so placing an alien mystery alongside it gives the episode a ready-made sense of scale. The Doctor is not simply visiting a historical period; he is stepping into a moment when the world is looking towards the Moon and wondering what might be waiting out there.

The production made an important practical leap, too. The two-part story marked the first time the revived programme filmed principal photography with its cast in the United States. The team travelled to southern Utah, using the landscape around Monument Valley and Lake Powell to create the expansive desert scenes. Earlier episodes had used establishing shots of American locations, but this was a more substantial location shoot.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.shannonsullivan.com\&sz=32)

A Brief History Of Time (Travel)+1

The difference is visible. Those huge skies and striking sandstone formations make the characters seem small in a way that studio sets rarely can. The scenery is not merely a postcard backdrop: it creates an unsettling emptiness around the Doctor’s apparent death. There is nowhere to hide, and yet something is still watching.

The crew also brought parts of America to Wales. Cardiff locations were redressed as an American diner and government interiors, while the real Utah footage supplied the scale and geographical identity. The combination is a good example of television production making the most of both location work and carefully dressed sets.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.imdb.com\&sz=32)

IMDb+1

Director Toby Haynes gives the episode a visual confidence that suits the material. The framing is often wide and deliberate, allowing the environment to establish the mood before the dialogue takes over. In the more enclosed scenes, the camera helps create a different kind of unease: ordinary rooms become threatening when the characters cannot trust their own memories.

That contrast is the key. The episode moves between the grandeur of the American landscape and the claustrophobia of places where a person can be standing right in front of you—and still somehow escape your awareness.

## 3. The Silence: a monster built around a brilliant idea

The new enemy, the Silence, is the episode’s standout horror concept. Their defining ability is terrifyingly simple: when you look away from one, you forget that you have seen it.

This is a natural fit for television because it turns the viewer’s own habits against them. Horror often relies on the fear of something hidden just beyond the edge of the frame. The Silence make that uncertainty part of the story’s rules. A character might encounter one, turn away, and continue with their day without understanding why they feel uneasy. The audience is left wondering how long the creatures have been present—and how much of what we have seen can be trusted.

The design helps enormously. Their elongated faces, dark suits and deeply unsettling expressions make them look almost familiar, as though they have borrowed the outline of a human being without quite getting it right. They are not grotesque in an elaborate way. Their stillness and strange proportions do most of the work.

More importantly, their power changes how the characters investigate them. A conventional alien can be tracked, photographed, questioned or fought. The Silence undermine the basic reliability of observation. If a witness cannot remember seeing the creature, how can they warn anyone else? How do you build evidence against something your own mind keeps removing from the record?

It is a wonderfully economical science-fiction premise, and it produces horror without needing constant action. A corridor, a bathroom or a quiet conversation can become frightening because the viewer is encouraged to inspect the background and wonder what the characters might have forgotten.

The episode also introduces the idea that the Silence have been influencing human affairs for some time. That opens the story out beyond a single monster encounter. The threat may be woven into history, politics and everyday life, with the characters struggling to identify the extent of it.

There is a catch, though. The Silence are so effective as a mystery that the episode risks leaning too heavily on their central trick. Once the audience understands the rule, some scenes become exercises in waiting for the characters to catch up. That is part of the suspense, but it can also make the story feel like it is deliberately withholding information rather than steadily revealing it.

Even so, as an introduction to a new enemy, this is excellent work. The Silence are frightening because they turn a familiar human weakness—forgetting—into an alien advantage. The monster is not just something that can hurt you. It is something that can make you doubt your own account of what happened.

## 4. The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River: a family with secrets

The episode’s other major achievement is how it changes the relationships between its central characters.

At the start of the adventure, Amy, Rory and River have all experienced the Doctor’s death. They have grieved for him, and they know that a version of him is still alive somewhere earlier in his personal timeline. When that younger Doctor arrives, he does not share their knowledge. They must travel with him while keeping the terrible future they have witnessed to themselves.

This reverses the usual dynamic. The Doctor normally knows more than his companions, whether because he understands the alien threat or because he has lived through events they have yet to experience. Here, the companions carry information that he lacks. Their knowledge becomes a burden, and their affection for him makes that burden harder to bear.

Matt Smith handles the contrast particularly well. His Doctor is still mischievous and unpredictable, capable of making a joke in a tense situation, but there is a new vulnerability in the scenes where his friends look at him with sadness he cannot explain. He senses that something is wrong without knowing what it is. Smith can make that uncertainty visible without turning the Doctor into a different character.

It is also an effective development for Amy and Rory. Karen Gillan gives Amy a hard-to-read mixture of confidence and anxiety. She is determined to act, but the episode hints that she may be dealing with more than one source of fear. Arthur Darvill, meanwhile, makes Rory a stabilising presence without reducing him to the sensible one who stands in the background. He is observant, loyal and increasingly capable of challenging the Doctor when necessary.

Rory’s place in the TARDIS team feels especially important after Series 5. His relationship with Amy has already survived a great deal, and he is no longer simply the boyfriend who gets dragged into the Doctor’s adventures. He is an equal participant in the group, with his own perspective on what they are doing and what they owe one another.

Then there is River Song.

Alex Kingston is particularly strong here because River’s usual playful confidence has a sadder dimension. She knows the Doctor across a complicated timeline, and every meeting carries a different balance of familiarity and distance. She can flirt with danger, tease him and appear entirely in control, but the audience knows she has a perspective on their relationship that he cannot yet share.

That gap gives their scenes emotional weight. River’s affection is genuine, but it is shaped by a history that the Doctor has not experienced. Their conversations can be funny on the surface while quietly reminding us that time travel is not always a gift. Sometimes it means meeting someone you love at a point when they barely know you.

The Guardian’s contemporary review particularly praised the ensemble and the way the opening death reshaped the companions’ roles, turning the story into something closer to a family drama wrapped inside a science-fiction thriller.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.theguardian.com\&sz=32)

The Guardian

This is one of the episode’s smartest decisions. The mystery is not just “Who killed the Doctor?” It is also “What does it mean to know something terrible about someone who trusts you—and to be unable to tell them?”

## 5. Canton Everett Delaware III: a welcome addition

[Doctor Who: 10 Best NuWho Guest Stars Ever – Page 7](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/2_6a19_fdnOSkL2JXFOkz6quH4vz5pqQKThUFXpZVcPONHOi6xBzAWZ1G-ciLdX3bmeGHOjeJIii7ZUqYTS_sK-W6H6Uz2sDRrwA7BMwcXs6KExRelMV0cnYYrk60uhNFst4mnSyF1RxIeBzjfirX-wiCjbd1fZ-XSvYM4qxKOE?purpose=inline)

[whatculture.com](https://whatculture.com/tv/doctor-who-10-best-nuwho-guest-stars-ever?page=7\&utm_source=chatgpt.com)

The introduction of Canton Everett Delaware III gives the story a useful human perspective. Played by Mark Sheppard, Canton is a former FBI agent drawn into the Doctor’s strange investigation. He is suspicious, practical and not especially inclined to accept extraordinary explanations without evidence.

That makes him an effective counterbalance to the TARDIS crew. Amy, Rory and River have experience with the impossible; Canton has to decide whether to believe what he is seeing. His scepticism provides a point of entry for viewers who might otherwise feel overwhelmed by the episode’s multiple mysteries.

Sheppard brings an appealing mixture of dry humour and authority to the role. Canton is not written as a clueless official who exists only to be embarrassed by the Doctor. He is intelligent enough to recognise when the situation has moved beyond ordinary explanations, and he has the confidence to push back when the Doctor is being evasive.

His interactions with the Doctor are especially entertaining. The Doctor can be charming, rude and absurdly self-assured within the space of a few seconds; Canton is not easily dazzled by any of it. Their partnership gives the episode some welcome breathing room amid the conspiracy and horror.

The casting also contains a neat piece of behind-the-scenes family history. Mark Sheppard’s father, William Morgan Sheppard, plays the older version of Canton seen in the opening sequence. According to the production history collected by A Brief History of Time (Travel), Mark encouraged the team to cast his father in the role rather than simply playing both ages himself.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.shannonsullivan.com\&sz=32)

A Brief History Of Time (Travel)

It is a small detail, but it reflects the production’s attention to continuity across the story’s different time periods. The older Canton is a figure from the future of the narrative, and casting father and son lends the character an unusual sense of connection across time.

The episode also uses President Richard Nixon as part of its historical setting. Stuart Milligan’s portrayal gives the story a recognisable political backdrop without allowing the historical figure to dominate the plot. Nixon’s involvement helps establish the scale of the mystery: this is not an isolated incident in a country diner, but something reaching into the highest levels of government.

There is a risk in stories that use famous historical figures as supporting characters. They can become little more than recognisable faces or joke-delivery systems. Here, Nixon’s role is largely functional, but the setting is entertaining enough to carry it. The Doctor behaving like an eccentric visitor in the Oval Office is precisely the kind of absurdity the programme does well.

## 6. The episode’s final shock—and its biggest risk

The episode ends by adding another alarming question to the pile. Amy, already unsettled by what she has encountered, finds herself confronting a young girl connected to the mystery. The situation escalates into a sudden, shocking act that leaves viewers wondering what Amy knows, what she has forgotten and whether her own perceptions can be trusted.

It is a deliberately provocative cliffhanger. Rather than ending with the Doctor neatly explaining the situation, the episode leaves the characters—and the audience—in a state of uncertainty. The next instalment becomes essential, not merely because the adventure is unfinished, but because the meaning of what we have just watched is still unclear.

This is where the episode’s strengths and weaknesses become difficult to separate.

On the one hand, the cliffhanger is compelling. It makes the audience eager to return, and it ties the horror concept directly to Amy’s personal experience. The threat is no longer something happening in a distant government building or somewhere in the desert. It has become entangled with the companions’ lives and decisions.

On the other hand, the episode introduces a lot of mysteries at once: the Doctor’s death, the identity and purpose of the astronaut, the Silence, the child, the political conspiracy and the troubling clues surrounding Amy. Some of these questions are clearly intended to stretch across the two-part story and the wider series. But in the first episode alone, the accumulation can feel a little excessive.

A mystery works best when the audience can distinguish between clues that are meaningful and details that are simply being held back. “The Impossible Astronaut” is very good at making us curious; it is less interested in providing a stable foothold from which to work things out. For some viewers, that is part of the fun. For others, it may feel like the story is asking for trust before it has earned it.

This is a recurring challenge in Moffat’s most serialised writing. The elaborate construction can be thrilling when the emotional stakes and eventual answers come together. It can be frustrating when the immediate episode feels like a long sequence of questions designed to make the next instalment unavoidable.

Still, I would rather see Doctor Who take a bold swing with a story like this than settle for a routine monster-of-the-week opening. The cliffhanger has force because the episode has made the audience care about these characters and fear what the mystery might do to them.

## 7. Behind the scenes: an ambitious production

The scale of “The Impossible Astronaut” was not just a matter of its story. The production team made several choices that helped establish Series 6 as a more cinematic chapter in the Eleventh Doctor’s era.

The Utah shoot was the most obvious example. The location work around Monument Valley and Lake Powell gave the story an expansive visual identity, while the American setting allowed the production to build its conspiracy around recognisable historical imagery. The collaboration with BBC America helped make filming in the United States possible.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.shannonsullivan.com\&sz=32)

A Brief History Of Time (Travel)+1

Director Toby Haynes was central to that visual approach. His work balances large-scale landscape shots with tighter, more unsettling compositions during the encounters with the Silence. The effect is to make the world feel enormous while making the characters’ immediate surroundings feel dangerously uncertain.

Steven Moffat, meanwhile, was building a story that extended beyond a single episode. The premiere was designed as the first half of a two-part adventure, with its mysteries feeding into the following episode and the wider Series 6 storyline. That serialised structure was a major part of the season’s identity: rather than resetting everything at the end of each week, the series invited viewers to track clues across multiple adventures.

The cast had to work with that uncertainty, too. A Brief History of Time (Travel) reports that Alex Kingston was given detailed information about the season’s overarching story to inform her performance, while other cast members were kept in the dark to varying degrees. That approach makes sense for River, whose scenes often depend on the tension between what she knows and what she chooses to reveal.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.shannonsullivan.com\&sz=32)

A Brief History Of Time (Travel)

There is a practical storytelling advantage here. When an actor knows the destination of a character’s arc, a line can carry a different emotional emphasis even when the audience does not yet understand why. River’s confidence, occasional sadness and carefully timed silences help suggest a much larger story beyond the immediate adventure.

The episode’s production design and direction also reinforce the alien mystery without relying entirely on dialogue. The underground spaces, government interiors and deserted landscapes each create a different kind of tension. It is a polished, confident production, and it makes the season opener feel like an event.

## 8. Contemporary reception: a triumphant return, but not without criticism

When “The Impossible Astronaut” premiered on 23 April 2011, the reaction was enthusiastic overall, though not unanimous. Many reviewers admired its confidence, cinematic look and willingness to push the show into a darker, more serialised direction. Others thought the story was too crowded with mysteries and too determined to keep viewers guessing.

The Guardian’s Dan Martin praised the episode’s startling opening and its rapid shifts between comedy, gothic horror and cinematic action. The review treated it as a remarkably confident return for the series.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.theguardian.com\&sz=32)

The Guardian

The SFX review, collected by Doctor Who News, similarly admired the performances, direction, lighting and ambition, while noting that the episode could become talky and overloaded with important information. That is close to my own view: the episode’s best ideas are genuinely exciting, but there are moments when it seems to be racing to introduce the next mystery before the current one has settled.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.doctorwhonews.net\&sz=32)

The Impossible Astronaut: Press Reaction

Not everyone was convinced. Some contemporary critics felt that the episode’s many unresolved threads made it confusing, particularly for more casual viewers. The concern was not simply that the story was complicated, but that it sometimes seemed to prioritise withholding answers over establishing a clear line of progress.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.doctorwhonews.net\&sz=32)

The Impossible Astronaut: Press Reaction

That debate is understandable. There is a difference between a story that encourages viewers to think and one that makes them feel they have missed something essential. “The Impossible Astronaut” occasionally approaches the second category, but its atmosphere and character work give the mystery enough substance to keep it compelling.

The viewing figures were strong, too. The episode attracted approximately 6.5 million viewers overnight, rising to 8.86 million in the consolidated UK ratings once people who watched recordings within seven days were included. It achieved an Appreciation Index of 88, indicating a very positive response from those who rated it. More than 300,000 iPlayer views were reported within the first two days, on top of the television audience.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.doctorwhonews.net\&sz=32)

Final Ratings+1

There is an interesting detail in those numbers: the episode gained more than two million viewers through time-shifted viewing. Contemporary reporting later noted that 4.11 million people watched it after the original live broadcast or through same-day recording, making it a record-setting television event for recorded viewing at the time.

[image](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=https://www.doctorwhonews.net\&sz=32)

doctorwhonews.net

That is particularly fitting for an episode about memory, chronology and events that do not happen in the order the characters experience them. The ratings also show why overnight figures alone can be misleading when assessing a popular drama in an era of recording and catch-up viewing.

## 9. What works—and what doesn’t?

What works

– The audacious opening, which immediately raises the stakes.
– The Silence, whose memory-based horror is both simple and genuinely unsettling.
– Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Alex Kingston, all of whom make the emotional relationships feel lived-in.
– The Utah scenery and cinematic direction.
– Canton Delaware, a strong guest character who provides a grounded perspective.
– The cliffhanger, which gives the two-part story real momentum.

What doesn’t work quite as well

– There are so many mysteries that some emotional beats get crowded out.
– The dialogue occasionally delivers important information so quickly that it is difficult to absorb.
– The episode relies heavily on its second part to clarify what the first has set up.
– Some of the unanswered questions feel more like deliberate postponements than clues that can be pieced together.

## 10. Final verdict: an outstandingly bold season opener

# 9/10

My final rating

## Ambitious, eerie, cinematic

A strong start to Series 6

“The Impossible Astronaut” is not a perfectly balanced episode. It can be overstuffed, and there are moments when its determination to keep the audience guessing threatens to overwhelm the characters’ immediate emotional journeys. But its ambition is part of what makes it so exciting.

The opening death is a genuine statement of intent. The Silence are an inspired monster concept. The American setting gives the production a visual grandeur, and the central cast has developed into an ensemble capable of carrying a story in which the Doctor does not have all the answers.

Most importantly, the episode makes the mystery matter to the people at its centre. Amy, Rory and River are not simply following clues; they are carrying the knowledge of a future that the Doctor cannot remember. Their affection for him becomes inseparable from the secrets they have to keep.

That is what elevates the episode beyond an elaborate puzzle. Beneath the government conspiracies, strange creatures and time-travel paradoxes is a story about friendship, grief and the painful distance that can exist between people who care deeply about one another.

It is a confident opening to a season that intends to take bigger narrative risks. It does not answer every question, and it certainly does not make every detail easy to follow. But it leaves the audience with a fascinating enemy, a troubling mystery and an irresistible reason to watch the next episode.

For me, that earns it a very strong 9/10.

## Sources and further reading

– [BBC Studios — official episode guide](https://www.doctorwho.tv/stories/the-impossible-astronaut?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
– [Doctor Who News — final UK ratings](https://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/04/dwn0105160412-impossible-astronaut.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
– [Doctor Who News — contemporary press reaction](https://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/04/dwn230411215008-impossible-astronaut.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
– [The Guardian — Dan Martin’s episode review](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/apr/23/doctor-who-the-impossible-astronaut?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
– [A Brief History of Time (Travel) — production history](https://www.shannonsullivan.com/doctorwho/serials/2011ab.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
– [Doctor Who Magazine — on location for the two-part story](https://pocketmags.com/doctor-who-magazine/dwm-special-44-on-location/articles/the-impossible-astronaut-day-of-the-moon?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

### Next time: Article 2 — “Day of the Moon”

[Doctor Who Day Of The Moon – TV Review | GamesRadar+](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/ytFZQ2olHK4OnFFOz95AgqsZ0-ysDv4aTZGIEoflpQy_-3N7U5iSchTY_SEjcK-e2rcWlbrHl0zt0aSDI5JNEkPmwFqp_yf04ok2Ixw9HjGiw5_VmXoo9uM63vAOXQnoOWS1CQTZ6KB62PAwQclSsdsY7nuySD1-zFqTJzTbyIE?purpose=inline)

[gamesradar.com](https://www.gamesradar.com/doctor-who-6-02-e2809cday-of-the-moone2809d-tv-review/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

The story continues as the Doctor and his friends try to fight an enemy that humanity cannot remember. The Silence’s influence reaches further than anyone expected, Canton’s role becomes more important, and the episode must turn the first instalment’s many questions into a satisfying conclusion.

The big challenge is whether Steven Moffat can deliver answers worthy of that extraordinary opening—and whether the Silence can remain frightening once the characters begin to understand how to fight back.