['Doctor Who' – 'Day of the Moon']

Last week's 'Doctor Who' series 6 premiere left us with a million questions, and this week's conclusion left us with a million more! Brain...melting! Confusion...winning! What. Is. Happening!?

Steven Moffat and crew hurled us straight into the deep end after leaving our heads spinning with the first half of this thrilling two-part adventure. We landed right in the middle of the story, three months after we witnessed Amy shooting the little girl in the space suit and revealing her pregnancy to The Doctor.

Amy, Rory and River Song were desperate and running from both The Silence and from Canton Delaware and his gun-toting G-men. Their bodies were covered with 'Memento'-ish marks and, of yeah, they all died in the first act. Died! Shocking, right? Sure, but not as shocking as the image of The Doctor sporting a wild Sam Beam beard.

Actually, I kinda liked the beard. I was hoping The Doctor would decide to keep it for a little while and maybe even stroke it a few times (the beard, people, the beard!) while cooking up one of his clever ideas.

But, yes, back to the story ... The Bearded Doctor was stuck in a straight jacket and chains in Area 51, and Canton dropped Amy and Rory's bodies at his feet. This, of course, made absolutely no sense, since we thought Canton was our super cool new friend, and, well, Amy and Rory are two of the show's central characters, and they shouldn't be, you know, like dead and stuff.

But the truth was soon revealed inside The Doctor's impenetrable "zero-balanced dwarf star alloy" prison. Turns out everyone was working together on an elaborate ruse to throw The Silence off their trail. Amy and Rory faked their deaths, Canton was still our friend, and The Doctor slipped out of his straight jacket, had a good stretch and leaned against a cloaked TARDIS. With River safely swimming in the TARDIS swimming pool, it was time to start the revolution.

I loved the clever exposition scene with The Doctor explaining to Canton how the nano recorders worked and how The Silence have been manipulating humans to serve them for ages. The Silence can zap people to bits with a wave of their hand, but they'd rather skulk in the shadows and rule the Earth by using some form of alien post-hypnotic suggestion. Creepy. Very, very creepy.

It was easy to get behind our heroes' war against The Silence. The Doctor and crew were fighting for freedom and free will, which is an awesome thing to rally around, especially in a story set in the U.S. We take our freedom for serious here, ya'll!

I have one gripe: When and how did The Doctor and friends cook up this elaborate ruse without The Silence knowing about it? Perhaps I missed something, as everything seemed to be happening so goram fast.

Before our team could put their plan to murder The Silence dead in motion, the show had to deal with the business of Amy's pregnancy. Turns out she's not really pregnant, as she told The Doctor that she was only feeling ill. But then ... maybe she is pregnant ... and not pregnant at the same time. Confusion! Maddening, but captivating confusion!

With the preggers business on hold, Canton and Amy visited a Silence-infested orphanage looking for the little astronaut girl. These scenes were pure suspense and awesome macabre horror. The scene with Amy discovering the horde of Silence hanging all vampire bat-style from the ceiling was easily one of the most spine-chilling scenes of the series. But the super scary stuff was smartly undercut by a bit of comedy with the crazy orphanage caretaker flailing about.

Also funny: Richard Nixon just showing up whenever The Doctor needed him. This episode almost made me like Nixon, but then that scene in the final act ("Oh, Tricky Dick!"), reminded me that no one should ever like Nixon, ever.

The Doctor's plan to defeat The Silence was one of his most brilliant ideas yet. And watching him shove the defeat in their faces with such confidence and cleverness was pure pure joy. He didn't get any answers from them about astro-girl, but he managed to turn all of humanity against The Silence by hacking the moon landing broadcast. ("And one whacking great kick in the backside for The Silence!")

And then there were lasers and shooting and cool-looking sonic screwdriver-ing and River Song putting Lara Croft, Sarah Connor and Trinity all to shame with her heroic awesomeness!

I can't decide which River scene was my favorite, the action sequence or her first/final kiss with The Doctor. The chemistry between Matt Smith and Alex Kingston was off the charts in their lovely/sad goodbye scene, even if The Doctor seemed a bit put off by the smooch.

This was another incredibly exciting episode, but, as I mentioned earlier, it seemed to leave us with more questions than answers. The biggest one being: Who and/or what is that little girl and why did she seem to be regenerating in the final scene? Is she Amy's child who was somehow affected by all of Amy's TARDIS traveling? Was she Amy and The Doctor's daughter (not likely)? River and The Doctor's daughter? Something else entirely?

This season's big sweeping arc promises to be more complex, insane and emotional than last year's. This was a great big bold start to the season, and I can't wait to see where the TARDIS lands next.

Other thoughts/quotes/questions:

- The little girl was able to break out of her spacesuit prison, which means she's incredibly strong. But this still doesn't tell us who or what she is or why she was so important to The Silence.

- The baddies told Amy that she would " bring The Silence." So what did they mean by that?

- Loved that The Doctor was able to relate to Rory, who sometimes remembers spending 2,000 years alone waiting for Amy. More Doctor-Rory bromance scenes, please!

- It was nice to see the show solidify Amy and Rory's marriage. She and The Doctor are best friends, but "stupid face" Rory is Amy's true love.

- Who was the eye-patch lady?

- So are we done with The Silence now? Did they "fall?" It's tempting to say yes, but The Doctor's flashbacks seem to suggest otherwise.

- And we still don't seem to know the details of the Older Doctor's plan.

- So, yeah, Toby Haynes should probably direct every episode of 'Doctor Who' until the end of time. Just sayin'.

- Mark Sheppard really needs to return to the show at some point.

- "These things could really do with airholes!"

- "Very Aickman Road."

- "Welcome to America!"

- "My ol' fella didn't see that did he? He gets ever so cross."

- "Love a tomb."

- OK, folks, I'm sure I probably missed about a million things that you're dying to discuss, so please do so in the comments ...

Doctor Who' airs Saturdays at 9PM on BBC America.

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