The Impossible Astronaut (TV story): Difference between revisions

Amy reads out another story of the Doctor being caught while escaping with mates from a prisoner camp in Germany during World War II where they get caught when the Doctor confuses their escape route with the door to the commandant's office. A soldier shouts in German and pulls the Doctor out of their tunneled escape route.

Amy figures that the Doctor is trying to communicate by manipulating historic events of lesser significance while Rory continues to watch a Laurel and Hardy film completely disregarding the theory that the Doctor is waving at them from history books. Doorbell rings and as Amy goes to answer, Rory looks away. In this brief moment the doctor walks up to the camera in the film wearing his fez. The postman at the door hands over a envelope to Amy. The envelope has the number 3 written on its back in an etched white typeface. Upon opening the envelope, Amy discovers the following message written on a matted card:

The astronaut moves back towards the water and River shoots. She shoots five times and tries to shoot one last shot realising she'd already used that shot on the Doctor's Stetson. "Ofcourse not!" she says, as the Astronaut retreats into the lake, River scans the Doctor and confirms that he's dead. When Amy starts suggesting that this Doctor is a duplicate, the man comes over and confirms that it is the Doctor. He introduces himself as Canton Delaware III, and gives the group a tank of petrol as he was previously told to by the Doctor. He also reveals an invitation similar to those received by Rory and Amy and River. River suggests that a timelord's body is a miracle and there are whole empire "out there" that would rip his body apart to get hold of a single cell. Upon Rory's suggestion, the Doctor is then given a Viking funeral. Canton departs saying the trio will meet him again.

Back in the TARDIS, River insists that Amy, Rory and herself would keep the Doctor's death a secret from his earlier self. The Doctor becomes suspicious of the silence surrounding him in the TARDIS and asks them why the three are insisting on keeping the identity of the person who sent the envelopes a secret from him. The Doctor asks River but disbelieves her at first because she hasn't told the Doctor everything specifically why she was in prison and whom she had killed? However, Amy swears on fish fingers and custard and the Doctor sees the significance in the secrecy and how important it is to the trio. The Doctor fumbles around with the TARDIS controls as River manages to fix the tiny errors the Doctor leaves behind implying River knows how to fly the TARDIS better than the Doctor.

 

Signs on the TARDIS control and the inclusion of the two clues point to Canton (Mark Sheppard) being an ex-FBI agent who in 1969 was reassigned to a case by presidential order. The president of the USA, Richard Milhouse Nixon summons Canton to the Oval Office and tells him about the regular ''direct'' calls he'd been receiving suggesting that the calls were neither from a man or a woman.

 

The Doctor manages to cloak the outer shell of the TARDIS in invisiblity as the TARDIS discretely lands right inside the Oval Office. The Doctor slowly steps outside to find Nixon and Canton fixated on a recorded conversation on a voice recorder. This was the earlier conversation seen in the prequel to the episode. Canton suggests that the voice on the recording was that of a girl and takes back his statement when the kid utters her name - Jefferson Adams Hamilton. The call ends and the two find themselves in the company of a third man - the Doctor.

 

The president calls upon the secret service agents stationed outside the Oval Office who wrestle the Doctor to the ground. The Doctor asks River to switch off the invisibility cloak from the TARDIS exterior and the roomfull of agents, the president and Canton fall silent. Amy, Rory and River walk out of the TARDIS adding to the agent's further confusion. The Doctor asks the president to let him explain what is happening here insisting he was an agent sent from the Scotland Yard alongside Agents Legs (Amy), Nose (Rory) and Mrs Robinson (River). River angers in discontent telling the Doctor she hates him. Canton allows him his five minutes as the head of security Agent Carl Peterson begins to disapprove. Still, the Doctor asks for a SWAT team ready to mobilise, street-level maps of Florida, a pot of coffee, 12 jammie dodgers and a fez to be brought to him. Only his request for the maps is agreed upon.

 

Amy sees a first clear glimpse of the [[Silent]] standing in the doorway but forgets all about it when Rory blocks her view. She starts to feel herself throw up and asks for the rest room. Accompanied by one agent, Amy finds herself at the door to the rest room where upon entering she gets face-to-face with the Silent once again. Amy is afraid and confusedas a White House worker named Joy walks out of one of the cubicle and is eventually obliterated by the Silent. The Silent then asks Amy to tell the Doctor what he should and shouldn't know. Amy understands then that she would forget all about the Silent when she walks out and therefore takes a quick snap of the alien on her handheld mobile phone. Upon exiting she forgets about the incident and returns back to the Oval Office as nothing happened.

 

The Doctor chooses Florida because NASA was based in Florida in 1969 and soon discovers a point on the map where three streets named Jefferson, Adams and Hamilton, after the three founding fathers of USA. A distress call from the same caller puts urgency into the minds of the people present in the room and the Doctor tags Canton along on a ride to Florida in his TARDIS. Canton upon entering the TARDIS utters the infamous line everyone else does the first time: "It's bigger on the inside". The Doctor tells Rory to explain everything to Canton when they land on the designated coordinates in Florida. Canton realises that the Doctor can travel through both space and time, and that the bunch were actually from the future.