It's part two of a memory-bending timey-wimey story, and here I am with part two of catching up on my blog. I did do my workout on schedule, but on this day I worked dang near eighteen hours in order to kick a software release out the door. So now here I am with a back-dated entry about a moon shot.

So let's get it done.

Day of the Moon

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The back half of this two-parter continues with loopy storytelling by skipping ahead three months, and separately following Amy, Rory, and River being hunted all across America by FBI agent Canton Everett Delaware. Not just hunted, but apparently killed. Each has black hash marks drawn all across their arms and faces, denoting all of the times they have seen the memory-wiping Silence. Amy and Rory are both apparently shot to death, while River leaps to her apparent doom from the top floor of a skyscraper. Holy cow!

Oh, and the Doctor has been held prisoner in chains in a heavily-guarded warehouse in Area 51, with a prison built around him constructed from dwarf star alloy. Things look pretty grim when Canton arrives with both Amy and Rory in body bags and drags them into the Doctor's cell...

...only to have them both emerge from the bags perfectly healthy, having spent the past three months probing the extent of the Silence' occupation of Earth (extent: complete). Then they all pop into the invisibly-cloaked TARDIS as the Doctor effortlessly escapes his chains, they rescue River from her high dive, and get on with defeating the invisible alien overlords.

The key mystery: Amy is no longer pregnant. Oh, and she occasionally sees a mysterious eye-patched woman appearing through non-existent sliding peep-holes. And at a creepy nearly-abandoned orphanage she sees a photo of herself with a little girl who is apparently her daughter. Just lots and lots of creepiness all around.

In the end Canton is able to get a video recording of a Silence declaring that all humans should kill them (the Silence) on sight, and then the Doctor is able to feed that into the video footage of the moon landing, thus insuring that the entire human race for generations to come will continually receive subliminal instructions on how to overthrow their hidden alien overlords. Also: there's a bit of bait-and-switch in which it appears that Amy is pining after the Doctor, when it in fact turns out to be Rory that she is haplessly and completely in love with. Which, of course, makes Rory very happy.

Just like the first half, there is so much going on in this story. There are plot elements that are deliberately obscured which won't become apparent or relevant until much later. I still believe that the middle of Series Four is easily the strongest run of the modern series (Blink, The Human Condition, The Family of Blood), but this sequence comes up a strong second. The intricate plotting of this season is delicious, and I vividly remember how exciting it was to try to piece through it as it originally aired. Watching it now with full knowledge of where everything will resolve, it is amazing how well it all holds up. Steven Moffat was born for this, and he absolutely knocks it out of the park as show runner right here. I only wish he had walked away after the 50th anniversary, but I'll get to that in a couple weeks.

So that's it for today (well, yesterday). Just upstairs there is a treadmill waiting for me, and a weird little prequel to one of the most interesting and unique Second Doctor stories. Time to get to it.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh
Companion(s): Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song
Episode(s): Day of the Moon
Steps Walked: 7,543 today, 3,116,189 total
Distance Walked: 4.08 miles today, 1,626.43 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 100 today, 4,664 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
How Many Times has Rory Died?: 2
How Many Times has Amy Died?: 1
Is Anything Cool?: Surprisingly, nothing is cool today
Weight: 249.86 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.44 lbs