(There will not be spoilers. I wouldn’t do that to you, Dear Readers. I will, however, whet your appetites.)
Starring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Alex Kingston, The Impossible Astronaut opens the sixth season of the revived series and does so with a bang. Current showrunner and executive producer Stephen Moffat does a superb job of reinforcing the popular theory that he feeds on fear. The double-barrel preview is among the scariest, funniest, most thrilling storytelling the Doctor has ever known.
The Impossible Astronaut begins lightly enough with laughter and comforting, familiar faces, for all of five minutes… before shocking you out of your seat. Moffat weaves a jaw-dropping tapestry of moments that bring you a chilling nightmarish adventure you can’t prove didn’t actually happen. He establishes the ‘rules’ for his latest beasties just in time for you to realize that you should’ve hid behind the sofa ten minutes ago.
A black belt Aikido master can knock you to the floor, breathless, before you even know you’ve been hit. At the start of the hour, Moffat does this to his viewers and he doesn’t let up.
The most enjoyable part of the night’s experience was the fact that it was shown on the big screen, and shared between hundreds of fans. This was, as Michael Austin explained, the entire point of Secret Formula. “We take a TV show and make a party out of it,” said Austin. “Watching TV is usually a solitary thing. We turn it into a social event. You can drink, schmooze and flirt with people who you know you have at least something in common.” BBC America caught wind of Secret Formula, and was only too happy to chip in. “[BBC] came to our last Arrested Development party. They said ‘This is awesome. We’ve gotta get involved.’”
