Over-Analyzing The Crown: S3E7 Moondust

All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Prince Philip has a Very Special Episode dedicated to his midlife crisis and the moon. Also- astronauts, and corgis, and priests, oh my!

Princess Anne (Erin Doherty) and two children (probably the actors playing her brothers Prince Andrew and Edward) during the rocket launch party scene in The Crown.

Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies), enchanted by the moon in The Crown.

• This may be a particularly quote heavy blog post, as I find Philip absolutely hilarious (if sometimes ridiculously inappropriate). He’s one of my favorite characters and reminds me very much of my own husband, who often says hilariously inappropriate things and is also tall and slim like Philip.

• At the start of the episode, Prince Philip is watching the astronauts talk on television while wearing blue and dull green. The queen (also in green) comes in to join him and mentions that she’s sending a message to the moon, which will be inscribed with other messages on a disc and left on the moon along with an olive branch “for the little green men to wave about.” I haven’t noticed much of a color story in this episode, but I do love that they’re both wearing some sort of green while she’s joking about the “little green men.”
  Here’s the text of the note the Queen sent to the Moon. “On behalf of the British people, i salute the skill and courage that have brought man to the moon. May this endeavor increase the knowledge and well-being of mankind?

• I love how grumpy Philip is when he’s walking up to the church with his wife.
  Queen: “[The dean] has been with us for nearly 20 years.”
  Philip: “That may make him loyal, but it does not make him interesting.”
  “Shh.”
  This exchange starts off a theme of Philip finding people or events in his life boring throughout the entire episode.

• The queen wears a purple hat and just a ridiculously gorgeous coat to church. “They have ears, but they hear not” speech is hilariously on point for Philip. Anne, behind her father, shows a little more restraint and doesn’t cross her arms like he does, but her face still shows how annoying and boring she finds the Dean (like father, like daughter).
  Philip-ism about the old Dean of Windsor, as he says that he’s not coming back to church again: “It’s not a sermon, it’s a general anesthetic.” 

• Queen: “Is it possible, do you think, the dean, might have reached, how can i put this kindly, the moment of his own obsolescence? I noticed one or two people struggling to stay awake.” (maybe the most British way of saying this ever)
  Private Secretary Michael Adeane: “We could discreetly start the search for a replacement.”
  ”Yes, Good riddance. Someone with a bit of oomph, I think so.”
  “Zest.” “That’s it.”
  “Pep.” “Yes, thanks.”
  “Vim.” “Yes, thank you.”
  I enjoy how Michael Adeane ever so subtly pokes the driest of humor at the queen here in his use of many many synonyms to describe what she wants in the new dean. He’s been her private secretary for 16 years as of the time of this episode (which is partially why it’s so unbelievable/funny when Philip can’t remember Michael’s name in a few episodes after he retires) and they clearly known each other very well at this point.
  The practice polo cage Philip uses in one scene to outrace His Demons is so fucking ridiculous looking. 

• I was curious as to why they seem to be at Windsor for most if not all of this episode and looked it up. As this Harper’s Bazaar article on the royal residences states, “Buckingham Palace is the Queen’s working residence during the week when she and the Duke of Edinburgh are based in London. However, they go to Windsor Castle most weekends, spend each August and September at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, and head off to Sandringham House in Norfolk every Christmas.” So it makes sense that they’re at Windsor most of the time, since most of this episode seems to take place on Sundays (Apollo 11 launched on a Wednesday and the moon landing took place on a Sunday).

Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth at church in The Crown

• It looks like a really amazing rocket launch party. There’s a lunar module cake and they have like astronaut helmets and space banners and rocket party hats. I wish I could find ANY screenshots of it to share here. I particularly enjoy the little quick background scene where Anne carefully places multiple party hats on her sleeping grandmother, with Margaret’s help. Charles also appears to be present, if in the background, and he looks pretty happy to be hanging out with his family, so perhaps he and the Queen have mended things up a bit since the last episode.
  Philip looks even more excited about the rocket lift off than any of the children and it’s pretty amazing.
  Philip-ism, as he looks for his wife: “If I say She and we’re in Buckingham palace, who do you think I mean?” 

•  I literally didn’t even realize Margaret and Tony came to the rocket launching party at first, because Margaret is wearing a dark brown dress that is just so damn toned down for her. We really don’t spend any time with them in this episode, but based on the Margaret and Tony episode we get at the end of the season, I’m guessing the dark brown might indicate the sad state of their marriage. It’s also barely ever mentioned in the series, but they have two children themselves, named David and Sarah. You can read all about them here.
  As was hinted at in S2E7 Matrimonium, Tony did, in fact, have an illegitimate child with Camilla Fry, the wife of his friend Jeremy Fry (The Crown portrayed Tony and the Frys as having a three-way relationship, which is alleged in the 2008 book “Snowdon: The Biography” but hasn’t been fully substantiated). His daughter, Polly, was born a few weeks after he married Princess Margaret; his paternity was confirmed by a DNA test in 2004. “Snowdon: The Biography” also alleged that Jeremy Fry was actually intended to act as Tony’s best man at the wedding, but had to drop out due to illness.

• As he sits up to watch the moon landing, there are American flags behind him and a toy astronaut in front of him. 
  I love that Philip asks the staff to wake up all the children to see the moon landing. We get a really quick montage of all the butlers and maids gently shaking Andrew and Edward awake and helping them put their robes on.
  Anne’s dress in the moon landing scene is really cute – black, with multicolored lines on a slightly offset bit. 

• The newspapers Philip is reading when he’s ignoring his private secretary not only talk about the race to the moon, but also mention a few other things that seem to emphasize other men’s achievements, such as, “Man dies saving daughter.” He’s wearing a tie that’s dark blue with little white dots on it, vaguely reminiscent of the moon. He’s also wearing his military coat here, which seems to refer to his longing for his lost career. Basically, everything in this scene emphasizes Philip’s midlife crisis.
  Philip-ism: “British Concrete Society, is that a joke?”
  Sidenote: The concept of a “midlife crisis” was first named in 1965, so the concept is still relatively new when this episode takes place. Philip does admit at the end that he’s going through a crisis, but he avoids actually calling it a midlife crisis. Wikipedia defines a midlife crisis as “a psychological crisis brought about by events that highlight a person's growing age, inevitable mortality, and possibly shortcomings of accomplishments in life.” Plenty of people don’t have midlife crises, but of those who do, a death of a loved one is often a precipitating factor. “Moondust” almost unfolds like a mystery, in a way, as we don’t realize until the very end that Philip is experiencing these feelings primarily because of his mother’s death, which hadn’t previously been revealed.

• Philip’s private secretary gives some choice knowing glances as the new priest discusses his priest sanctuary idea, seemingly realizing that this is exactly the situation Philip is in. 
  Philip-ism: “But If one of those buildings is free and you want to fill it with hot air and thought, be my guest.”

• Tobias Menzies has the most ridiculously expressive eyes, which he uses to great effect as Philip. This is a much quieter, less dramatic role than his role as Jack Randall in Outlander, and although Philip is funny, he’s not as hapless or pathetic as Edmure Tully in Game of Thrones, but I think it may be the finest work he’s ever done.
  Philip doesn’t have the anger that he did in the first two seasons and he definitely seems more “settled” (which was pretty much the Queen’s end goal in Season 2), but there’s kind of a new hopelessness, as he stays up late every night to watch all the space and moon reports, the lone holdout among his family. He even cries a little at the sight. As he goes through his various duties, at a textile mill, at a dental prosthetic lab, he’s smiling, but he just looks a little lost. 

• It seems like Philip’s wrinkles are much more emphasized than we’ve seen previously. This may be because we’re getting tighter shots on his face as he' focuses on the space mission, but the show also definitely uses makeup to subtly age the actors throughout the season. They definitely look older and look their character’s age, which supports the decision to replace the Season 1 and 2 actors with older actors for season 3. I feel like if Claire Foy had continued to act as the Queen, you’d have an “aging” look similar to how Clare and Jamie look in Season 3 of Outlander, after supposedly 20 years have passed. They both look older then they did, but they’re also the youngest looking 40-somethings I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s just hard to make really young actors look like they’re entering middle age.
  Apparently most of the main actors also wear wigs in order to properly replicate their character’s hair color and period-accurate hair styles. Thinning hair, graying hair, and changing hairlines in the wigs also help age up the actors as the season progresses. I couldn’t find a definitive list anywhere (there’s a lot more info about Season 1-2 still than there is about 3), but the Queen, Prince Philip, and Princess Margaret definitely all wear wigs.
  If you’d like to read more about how accurate the makeup on The Crown is to real life, Harpers Bazaar Australia did a pretty great article on the makeup seen in the first two seasons.

• Then we get a shot of Philip flying for the first time this season; I’m pretty sure this is put in here not just to emphasize Philip’s discontent with his life but also to remind us of this part of his life before he later asks to meet the astronauts privately so they can talk “pilot to pilot.” I really enjoyed how the pilot frantically buckles his seatbelt back in as Philip takes over the controls and starts aiming the nose to the moon, going as high up as he can, much higher than the pilot would have taken it. When the pilot says that they need to get down from the elevation quickly, Philip replies, “But look, we’ve also lived. Just for a minute.” 

Dean Robin Woods with the Queen (Credit: Mirrorpix).

Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip with Tim McMullan as Dean Robin Woods in The Crown

Tim McMullan as Dean Robin Woods in The Crown

A scene set at St. George’s House in The Crown

• I have a theory that the queen specifically asked Dean Woods to check in on Philip and help provide him some guidance through his current crisis and feelings of loss. Right before the rocket launch party when Prince Philip asks her about the new dean, she says cagily that he’ll be a good fit “for the job I’ve asked him to do.” She then looks at her husband with a knowing smile. And then Woods is extremely persistent in engaging with Philip, even after Philip makes it very plain that he doesn’t really want to spend time with him or any of the priests.

• Dean Woods gives a sermon about exploration and space that would have been great for Philip to hear. The queen definitely seems to think this, as she looks next to her and misses him. But Philip is off trying to outrace his own demons by jogging through the grey-skied countryside because he has Feelings. As the audio of Dean Woods’ speech continues over his running though, we hear heavy breathing, like that of the astronauts' over their radios to space. Neither the scene immediately before or immediately after this one have any footage of the astronauts themselves, so this has to be Philip’s breath, intentionally laid over the audio to emulate space.
  The bit of Woods’ speech we can hear before it trails off into Philip’s overwhelming ennui goes: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Those words by T.S. Eliot have never rung more true. We stand at the dawn of a new age of space exploration. The promise of space has never felt more real….”

• The new dean of the church at Windsor wears a red shirt and cassock sometimes. This is apparently pretty normal in the Anglican church.

  Philip-isms about Dean Woods’ spiritual retreat for priests: “Your concentration camp for spiritual defectives.” “Do I need to show symptoms of despair? Should I sigh and moan dramatically. One does like to fit in.” 
  Philip trying to pretend that he cares about the priests’ problems is pretty hilarious. They talk about their “sense of directionlessness and redundancy” and how they feel like they’re failing to connect with the people. Honestly, they’re pretty much summing up Philip’s issues and he’s just in total denial.
  I love that Philip admits that his new religious faith is basically the moon and the space race. He at least knows himself!

• Dean Woods quotes Keats in response to Philip’s observation that the space race and the moon have become some people’s religion: “What is there in thee, moon, that thou shouldst move my heart so potently?” He then continues on, “Now we know what the moon is - nothing. Just dust. Silence. Monochromatic void. We see no god beyond those rocks and space dust, simply an unknowable vastness.” Then he switches to Psalms 8:3: “When i consider the work of thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars that thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
  The Keats quote is from a poem called Endymion, which you can read in full here. I’ll admit, I often am skeptical of characters just quoting a perfect poem at the perfect time in period dramas without rehearsal, as Dean Woods does here. We also see Margaret and Tony quote poetry at each other when they first meet at a party in Season 2. But I try to remind myself that people had a lot less entertainment in the past and read and memorized more than we do now, just as plenty of us can recite various quotes from our favorite movies, TV shows, and pop songs.

• Though Philip had actually been trying to be tactful for once in his life, when Dean Woods actually asks for his opinions, he lets loose his vitriol pretty ferociously. “Me? You want my thoughts? Really. Okay, right. I’ve never heard such a load of pretentious self pitying nonsense. What you lot need to do is get off your backsides, get out into the world, and do something. That is why you are all so lost.” He then continues to wax philosophic about how action is what defines us, not suffering, and says that men need to make their mark on the world. These beliefs all hearken back to his schooling at Gordonstoun, which were examined pretty thoroughly in S2E9 Paterfamilias, and his young adulthood in the British Navy.
  He also calls them all “navel-gazing underachievers infecting each other with gaseous doom” and tells them “If you want to start with action, clean up the floor.”

• Another Philip-ism comes up when they’re eating dinner, as he jokes that he’s eating so much venison that he’s going to turn into a deer. “I’m listening, with brown furry ears.”
  THE CORGIS WANT VENISON.  Well of course they do. Good puppiessss (y’all, I want a corgi SO BADLY, you have no idea. But husband John says he’ll only agree to me having a dog when I get a New York Times bestseller).
  By the way, the dogs playing the Queen’s corgis apparently eat just a boatload of cheese on set.

The Apollo 11 astronauts meeting the royal family at Buckingham Palace. In real life, Prince Philip was right there with his family meeting the astronauts. He also didn’t have a personal meeting with them (as the episode depicted) (Credit: PA / Getty).

The actors playing the Apollo 11 astronauts and their wives at Buckingham Palace in The Crown.

• Philip is obviously delighted when the Queen tells him that the astronauts are going to come visit the royal family. The Queen says, “I thought that would cheer you up.” “Do I need cheering up?” “A little.” 
  It’s sweet how she so obviously knows him better than he knows himself. Right before his meeting with the astronauts, the queen stares at Philip with obvious concern, like she’s not quite certain how he’s going to react to anything. 

• Various stray thoughts about the astronauts’ visit to Buckingham Palace: Philip is basically a kid on Christmas morning when the astronauts come; he is absolutely way too excited. And he’s not the only one. Even the BUTLERS and the maids and footmen are excited, racing to the windows to see them, even though as staff of the royal family, they’ve obviously seen a lot.
  I laughed out loud at the background bit in which Margaret lights a cigarette and says “Please don’t tell me you want to talk about children” to one of the astronauts’ wives, who looks suitably flabbergasted.
  We really get to see Anne and her little brothers interact with each other and other family members for the first time this season. Anne at one point shoves her little brother out from behind her to meet Neil Armstrong.
  The Queen wears a blue dress with a white purse that’s very similar to what she wore in real life, but not identical. I always wonder why they made the little changes they do - like why this dress has sleeves added, but the dress Jackie Kennedy wore to Buckingham Palace in season 2 had its sleeves taken away.

Queen Elizabeth meeting the Apollo 11 astronauts at Buckingham Palace (Credit: Bettmann / Getty).

Olivia Colman as the Queen meeting the Apollo 11 astronauts in The Crown.

• In the episode, the astronauts all have colds and Prince Philip runs out of handkerchiefs to give them. In real life, only Neil Armstrong is known to have had a cold at the time of their meeting, but it apparently was bad enough that he considered backing out of the meeting. However, his wife had other ideas. “She told me that if I had to be embalmed, we were going to see the palace,” Neil Armstrong said. “She wanted to see the place.” He apparently coughed on the Queen and when he tried to apologize, coughed on her again. His illness was apparently memorable enough that the Queen later asked an acquaintance about Armstrong’s health.
  Buzz Aldrin also revealed on Twitter in 2016 that "Mike Collins almost fell down the stairs trying not to turn his back on Queen Elizabeth II."

• Historically, the queen had met space travelers before this visit and continued to show interest in space afterward. She met Yuri Gagarin, the first man to go into space, in July 1961, and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, in 1964. She also met an astronaut from Apollo 8 prior to the Apollo 11 astronauts’ visit. When Apollo 12 returned to the moon in November 1969, she woke up early to watch TV coverage of the event.

• It appears that, for their meeting with Prince Philip, the astronauts are placed in the same big room that Princess Alice was exploring when the journalist found her there in S2E4 “Bubbikins.” Is that the big, grand room they use to impress visitors? This also ties the episode back to Philip’s mother, whose name has not actually been spoken as of this point in the episode.

Neil Armstrong (Henry Pettigrew), Buzz Aldrin (Felix Scott) and Michael Collins (Andrew Lee Potts) in a scene with Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies)

Jane Lapotaire as Princess Alice in The Crown.

• Philip’s meeting with the astronauts is super awkward, with lots of long silences, and disappoints him. He tries to ask the astronauts big profound questions about how they felt up in space, e.g., what their thoughts were out there about humans’ place in the universe, but the astronauts respond that they really didn’t have time for thinking of that, as they were constantly busy performing different procedures and checking items off the list. This is exactly how he guessed it would be earlier in the episode, when he told off the priests at St. George’s house. “Action is what defines us, Action, not suffering - all this sitting around, thinking and talking. Let me ask you this, do you think those astronauts up there are catatonic like you lot. Of course not, they are too busy achieving something spectacular. And as a result, they are at one with the world. At one with their god. And happy.”
  He was terribly disappointed when the astronauts’ most profound observation to him was that their water cooler in space sucked and kept them awake with noise. They then took the opportunity to ask him lots of mundane questions about his life - how many rooms are in the palace, how long the hallways are, and how many staff they had, before the audio trails off.

• Philip later comments to the queen: “I don’t know what I was thinking. I expected them to be giants, gods. But in reality they’re just three little men, pale-faced with colds.”
  The Queen notes in response that the very qualities that make one a good astronaut (their sense of duty, reliability, modesty) and perfect in a crisis are not necessarily those that make for a really interesting person (originality or inventiveness). It almost seems like she’s talking about herself and Margaret again, hearkening back to her discussion with Philip at the end of S3E2 Margaretology about the dull, trustworthy people vs. the interesting, unreliable people of her family. “They never wanted to be public but because of one event, they will be forever.” (They must have known what they were getting into though, right?) “They delivered as astronauts but they disappointed as human beings.”
  Philip-ism: “Good job there were no little green men. They could be forgiven for thinking, ‘if that’s all planet Earth has got to offer, let’s give the place a miss.’”

• After the astronauts disappoint him terribly, he pauses by the staircase leading up to his mother’s empty room and walks up to look around at it sadly. He then goes to St. George’s again and finally admits that something’s been wrong with him lately; although he’s generally a cantankerous person, he’s been over-exercising, over-zealously following the space race. He talks about his mother’s death and his own lack of faith for the first time in the episode, says straight out that he’s desperate and lost, and asks the priests for help.
  Sidenote: He says something slightly mysterious while talking about his crisis. “Just like other people hitting that crisis, you resort to all the usual things to try to make yourself feel better. Some of which I can admit in this room and others which I probably shouldn’t.” This seems to imply that he may have committed some big sin he can’t talk about with the priests. Just like in the second season, where Philip never actually denies that he’s cheated, it’s left really ambiguous as to whether Philip has had affairs or not.

• As the end of the episode notes, St. George’s House is a real organization that Prince Philip helped found (although in real life, it was started a few years before the moon landing occurred). He also was apparently quite a bit more enthusiastic about the concept from the get-go than is portrayed here. You can find out more information about the founding of St. George’s House here.

• Wonderfully, the entire episode seems to fulfill the T.S. Eliot quote from Dean Woods’ sermon. “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” After meeting the astronauts and trying to find meaning in the space race, he finally comes back to the priests and admits that he’s been lost since his mother’s death; he is coming back to where he started and now knows himself better.