Doctor Who Season 6: 5 Questions About ‘The Impossible Astronaut’

Considering Moffat’s whole “time can be unwritten” thing, I’d say that is the real Doctor. There’s no real reason to suspect otherwise. He gathered them together because they’re who was with him when it started. Clearly. They’re all involved. And I’d say that, with The Doctor being all wonderfully clever, he has put a plan into motion to change things.

Does he know? I’m gonna go with no. I’d say he suspects but isn’t sure yet. Fish fingers and custard was a big clue that River and Rory wouldn’t get.

Kinda tired of the whole “Is River Amy?” thing. I get that it fits, but still, just don’t like it. Makes Rory pointless, and I like Rory.

The Astronaut is Twelve. Just throwing it out there, knowing it’s B.S.

I think that the Astronaut is River Song at the picnic, she’s the gunslinger of the group. The Doctor on numerous occasions has asked River “who did you killed?” I imagine its Doctor WHO. I don’t think the pain in AMy’s stomach is because of the pregnancy but rather intensifies the threat of the situation with these aliens.

The short and least amount of spoilers answer I have is River is the astronaut. I know we saw it was a young girl, but I have a theory about that too that goes into a lot of detail about this episode and past ones with River in them. If you want to see the whole thing go to

http://newsonshuffle.com/2011/04/doctor-who-6×1-the-impossible-astronaut/

and add your two cents to the discussion.

And yes, I do believe that was the Doctor we saw die in the beginning. Does that mean we are ending the show with Matt Smith? Timey Whimey I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. As someone else said, time can be rewritten.

In the preview for the next episode, there is a bullet hole in the helmet. The shot connected, but didn’t damage her. But still… Amy shot her. Kinda hard not to take that kind of thing personally.

Nope. They’re pregnant. Knocked up… with SILENT BABIES AAAAAHHHHH

The doctor wants something changed in his own timeline but he cant do it personally so by showing them all his death he knew that they’d do whatever they possibly could to stop it, thus changing whatever he wants changed.

River – Pond. River Song. Amy Pond. Daughter and mother, perhaps? Granddaughter and mother? River could be the astronaut/little girl too.

Tardis! The doctor said someone was trying to build a tardis there in ‘the Lodger’ hence his tardis being unable to land at the time as it was causing interference.

And with the knowledge that James Corden, who was also in that episode, is returning in a later episode we will get answers! I was just surprised that the fake tardis appeared so early!

Amy shot the Astronaut thinking that killing it would prevent The Doctors death on the beach. And Delaware will be a recurring character for the season.

I don’t see how anyone is getting that the astronaut is River. It’s well established that every time she meets the Doctor, she’s in prison for who she killed. She knows who she killed and I think she’d remember killing him on the beach, yeah? But she was just as upset and shocked by it as the rest of them.

Would also like to point out that Moffat has used space suits before: Silence in the Library. Those aliens are called The Silent. Might be meaningless, but Moffat’s obviously into bringing back elements from old episodes, so I’m wondering if it’s relevant at all.

I think that the little girl in the suit might have been Amy and Rory’s daughter from the future.

The Doctor may already know about the death of 1100 year old him. He has good hearing and I think I saw his legs on the stairs when River, Rory and Amy were talking about how they couldn’t tell him about it.

The Astronaut who shot the Doctor could be anyone. I don’t think it was River though, because she’s already in jail for killing the “greatest man she ever knew” who admittedly is not necessarily the Doctor but it’d be weird if it were anyone else, but she was still shocked by his death here. I think it could be the 900 Year Old Doctor or Twelve. Or maybe even Amy, who kills Eleven in order to set off the chain of events in this episode so that they learn about the Silence and save the little girl (who may be her daughter).

It was really cool to see the space ship from the Lodger again, I was hoping we’d get a better explanation of where it came from so I look forward finding out what it has to do with the Silence since it seems they’ve been on Earth for a long time now (as of 1969).

But what does the Silence have to do with the TARDIS blowing up last season?

I noticed the resemblance to the ship from “The Lodger”… and thought it had to do with the BBC saving money and not a throwback to the earlier story. I know: *facepalm* LOL

Silence your internal dialogue and enjoy the ride. That being said, a friend of mine sent me this; found it quite interesting.

Sightings of the Silence or indications of their presence in Series 5:

The Eleventh Hour -

While hanging from the TARDIS, the Doctor looks up into it and for a couple of seconds has a confused look on his face.

When Rory and Amy exit the elevator on the second floor of the hospital, Rory glances behind him at something, but when he looks back towards Amy, he shakes his head like he forgot something. It is about 42:49.

In the scene at the end of the episode where Amy goes into the TARDIS for the first time. there’s one point where she leans back on the console and is looking around the room. The camera is pointed towards her face, so we can’t see what she’s looking at. She looks around with a sort of awe-struck smile, but then her eyes linger over something and her expression turns into a look of horror. She starts breathing really quickly and turns as if to get the Doctor’s attention, but as soon as she’s facing him she just asks, perfectly normally, “Why me?”, as if she’d completely forgotten about what she’d just seen. Also, she flicks a TARDIS button/switch/lever at this point. Accidental Amy or something meaningful?

The Beast Below – At around 9:25 a black figure walks past Amy, she looks confused/scared for a couple of seconds then shrugs it off.

Victory of the Daleks – Near the end after the Daleks escape, the Doctor moves slowly backwards, as he gets near to the green framed window/doorway he looks to his left with a shock. The camera then switches to Amy and Churchill who both stare to the Doctor’s left with a look of shock before Amy continues on as normal with the line “Doctor, it’s OK you did it, you stopped the bomb.”

The Lodger – At 21:47 for a couple of shots Amy looks in the distance or at the screen and gasps, then shouts for the Doctor’s attention but he doesn’t listen. She looks away and shakes it off.

Vampires of Venice – At the end when Rory, Amy, and the Doctor are standing by the TARDIS, the TARDIS door is open and then shuts on it’s own.

The Big Bang – There are cloaked figures behind the Sarcophagi in the museum; a third figure moves out of shot at the edge of the screen at about 13:31

Amy’s pregnant. It’s going to be a recurring plot thread for the season. Moffat said so in this weeks Confidential.

Maybe he’smeant to be from the doctors past or future.Maybe maybe not.Maybe she is too,or because she’s seen that alien thing more than once too,twice or more.to try and stop it happening in the future.got sucked in or something.?

i reckon river is possibly a descendant of amy

I’m calling it now: River is Rory and Amy’s child…

RADIATE!

Yeah maybe those aliens from Silence In The Library or the new alien, The Silent was the one in the space suit. I mean, why is everyone thinking that it’s River? I mean the Doctor has quite a few enemies. The question is why would the Doctor let himself be killed? He clearly knew he was gonna die, and he was getting ready for it, and he also knew who would kill him. It was like he saw how he would die at an earlier time and there was nothing he could to stop.
I’m guessing the Doctor brought all of them together so that they could do something to reverse his death. But this plotline is gonna span the entire season I think, so that’s a lot of waiting we have to do.

But what if it was River who left the messages? What if her future self summoned them instead of the Doctor? I mean she was able to leave messages for the Doctor when she needed him last season.

I would love to know if all the water references are significant or just one hell of a coincidence: Amy POND, RIVER Song, The Doctor dying at a LAKE.
Also the SILENCE in the library and The SILENTS: Are they related or is that a coincidence too?

Like last season I think by the end of this season we’ll revisit these episodes. Like when the Doctor went back through time to leave Amy a message in the Big Bang, we went back to previous episodes. It’ll probably happen again this season when we find out the answers.

All this wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff hurts. I love it.

Since River had stated that she had been with the Doctor at the End of the Universe, I thought she might be a regeneration/reincarnation of either The Master (Time Lords can change sex when regenerating and the idea of ultimate love/hate being only a razor’s edge apart has a kinky appeal) or Martha Jones (who was my favorite Companion).

We’ve already seen Captain Jack’s death as the Face of Boa

I think the astronaut is River as a little girl in some odd way. I think the horrible thing she did to get in prison was kill the doctor. I think the doctor and circumstances created more than one instance of himself and he had to die to set things right. Also, I think that it was the doctor who blew up the tardus last season, just a different doctor in a different age. I believe Moffat created a damage control story line. The doctor revistited his own time line which tore a hole in the universe, and he had to explode the tardus to fix it all. River, why she kills the doctor, I don’t know, but that would be the mystery. I don’t know if any of this is true. I’m just guessing.

She was with The Doctor at the end of the Universe in “The Big Bang.”

Everyone has. And hopefully it’s an idea so fanficcy, only viewers things it’s a good idea, and not Moffat.

I’m willing to bet that Moffat and the rest of the production team did NOT have a set-in-stone idea of what The Silence was last season. Since “Silence” was more often referred to in the “lack of noise” sense, it’s very possible that while they knew the statements and the result were being said by the unseen Big Bad, they hadn’t actually decided what it would be.

The “silence” (lower case) last season seemed more like they were referring to, as Robert Calvert described the void in Lucky Leif and the Longships, “The unearthly dark of fathomless absence”. IOW, the silence of the end of the universe. It seems to have gone through some revision.

This is one of those things I always wonder about when reading or watching long-form fiction – how much was planned from square one, and what was made up on the fly, grabbing a detail from earlier to attach to and make it LOOK like it was planned.

It’s only worth sending him a letter if he sends back a recording of him reading it out loud. *drools*