10 Dumbest Things That Have Ever Happened In Doctor Who
3. The Impossible Astronaut Plan
Steven Moffat's masterplan for the sixth series of Doctor Who was fiendishly ambitious. To this day fans bicker over whether the whole shebang tied itself up in too many knots. However, while it fell into the "love or hate" category, there is one aspect of the Silence and Madame Kovarian's plotting that failed to meet the gold standard for general horse sense. It was certainly spectacular when an astronaut emerged from the water and assassinated Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor 10 minutes into the series premiere. For the idea to succeed, though, there had to come a point where River Song gets crammed in a spacesuit and submerged under a lake in Utah for some reason. Simples! Why not just shoot him from a distance? Assassins are supposed to work in the shadows, not wave a big sign saying how ludicrous they are. How long would it take to walk out of a big body of liquid in that bulky get up anyway? Was it a given the target would walk right up to the unexpected visitor? On top of all that, the Silence are possibly the ultimate stealth-based killers, so what's the point in setting up an elaborate scheme when the Doctor could be obliterated easily with no traceable evidence? It was just a waste of everybody's time really, wasn't it?
I am a journalist and comedian who enjoys American movies of the 70s, Amicus horror compendiums, Doctor Who, Twin Peaks, Naomi Watts and sitting down. My short fiction has been published as part of the Iris Wildthyme range from Obverse Books.
