By John Toon

Obverse Books, out now

Obverse Books’ ongoing series of monograms focusing on a Doctor Who serial or story continues with Stephen Moffat’s Series 6 two-part opener – The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon.

I’ve always enjoyed this epic two-parter, and where some parts of the community complained that it was too complex, I relished its multiple threads and the establishment of new territory to explore. This is the same approach taken by the writer of this volume, author John Toon, who also wrote the entry on Full Circle. I take it that he’s the go-to guy for stories involving characters rising out of the water – The Sea Devils to follow?

Right up front, Toon emphasises that the deliberate structure of the narrative was designed as a long game to keep viewers coming back, building up theories along the way. In the opening chapters he focuses on the popular conspiracies that are touched upon (even if tangentially) in the episodes – fake Apollo 11 Moon landing, Men in Black, Area 51, Watergate, fakes deaths – and then this is brought up to date with a chapter on how these conspiracies are still relevant in the Trumpian era of fake news.

Chapters 3 to 5 focus on the conclusion of the story, which relies upon the Doctor advocating 600 million viewers of the Moon landing getting a ‘kill switch’ trigger as a rallying call to kill the Silents (note, not Silence). Toon sees this as problematic, being inconsistent with the Doctor’s previously-shared views on morality, and there’s further issues with the use of guns and his turning of a blind eye to River’s gunplay. It’s a fair shout, and while I didn’t see it at the time, I can follow the arguments.

There is of course a point when we can’t really be beholden to a 1975 viewpoint from a regeneration seven people before, and for me this was at least challenged in A Good Man Goes to War and 12’s ‘Am I a good man?’ Yes, there is a moral ambiguity, and hooray for that. I particularly like the suggestion that the shadowy cabal is not a secret society but evil Moff and his production team, presumably sitting round a table in a futuristic lair under the Thames near Richmond. And it’s not too much of a leap to see The Silents and Kovarian as bad fans who’ve read the spoilers and jumped the gun with their actions.

Chapter 6 focuses on the ‘celebrity historical’ episode and asks whether these two episodes as they feature ‘Tricky Dicky’ Nixon. How prominent need a real historical character be in an episode to define it as this sub-genre within the show, and must it relate to actual events in said character’s life? Evidence from key stories is presented to us, and the only conclusion we can really draw is that it’s all subjective, and that there’s no single ingredient, template or formula.

Verdict: At 100 pages plus bibliography, Toon’s work is a brief but detailed treatise on the story. Written with clarity, and chunked up into easy-to-follow sections, the author presents his arguments well and let’s the reader decide what the intentions and consequences are. 8/10

Nick Joy