For an episode of Doctor Who titled “Kill the Moon” it was hard at first to even get an idea of what it could be about because were they really going to kill the moon?
This episode was one of those complex Who episodes where I’m not sure how to take in everything that happened. The plot of the episode is that the Doctor, Clara and Courtney end up going to the year of 2049 inside of a space shuttle. We meet Captain Lundvik and two of her astronauts that are on a mission to blow up the moon.
So far there, I was sucked in the episode and felt I understood most of the things that was happening. I enjoyed the fact that the Doctor ignored what Clara told him and brought Courtney with them because she is a decent character.
The monster of the week was an unnamed spider creature that attacked them and we later see a whole army of them. Being someone who utterly hates spiders, this ended up being an episode that I closed my eyes at during several scenes.
I didn’t really understand what the problems were with the moon other than the fact that there was high gravity there and that somehow, the troubles at the moon had wiped out a big bunch of humanity. I do get annoyed sometimes with how the exposition is executed because there are times when I don’t understand a part of a problem.
We do however find out in the episode that all this time, the moon has been an egg and it was about to hatch. A huge discussion takes place as Lundvik wants to blow up the egg, fearing that the creature inside will attack Earth while Clara is against the idea of killing it. What follows is where the episode became really complex as the Doctor decides that he doesn’t want to be involved and therefore takes off with the TARDIS without them as he makes them having to take the decision.
My favorite scene was funny enough the scene where Clara and Lundvik had to discuss and argue about whether the creature should get live or not. It was intriguing to follow Lundvik’s arguments because as much as I love Clara, she made some great points. Would it really be worth letting an unknown and potentially dangerous creature live, just because Clara felt it was unfair to it?
They are then able to connect to Earth and send out a simultaneous broadcast to the entire planet and ask them to make the decision by either leaving their lights on to let the creature live or turn it off as a response to let it die. Even though I can accept a time-machine in the shape of a police box with a time-lord who is over 1000 years old, for some reason this scene just seemed too silly. Let’s just accept for what it was and that every single person on Earth was watching that message and therefore turned their lights off.
As they are about to blow it up, the Doctor shows up and brings them into the TARDIS and takes them to Earth as they see the egg hatch and the creature flies away. We then see another egg aka another moon having been laid by the creature. That was overall a pretty cool plot in “Kill the Moon” and it felt like a very creative one.
But the final part of the episode is where it went back to being complex as Clara and the Doctor have their biggest argument ever inside the TARDIS. It was so hard to feel and know who to agree with because on one hand, it wasn’t fair to force Clara to make the decision whether or not to let the creature live at first. On the other hand, I understand the Doctor not wanting or being able to take every single decision for humanity’s best all the time. Was it respectful of him to let Clara decide or was she right of saying that the Doctor should have been there?
Those are some very tricky questions and we see Clara telling the Doctor that she is done and never want to see him again. We all know that won’t last for a long time and even Danny makes a point about it. Speaking of him, why can’t we have more scenes of him? Is he really only supposed to be there as her love interest and nothing else? That remains to be seen.
Overall, “Kill the Moon” was great episode, but it was definitely one of the more complicated episodes of Series 8. We have five episodes left and I’m starting to slowly enjoy Capaldi’s Doctor, but I still need more time to get used to him.
Doctor Who airs Saturday nights, 9/8c on BBC America.
[Photo via BBC]
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Hi Andy, I enjoyed your review. The bit you didn’t get about gravity and the earth is straightforward. The tides of the earth are controlled by the movement of the moon around it. Something has changed on the moon and causing huge high tides that are drowning parts of the world. It’s getting worse all the time and so Lundvik and her elderly astronauts have come to try to find out why. I enjoyed the episode but there were parts I didn’t get on Saturday night. It’s all there in the episode, though, if you watch it again and I think it’s even better the second time.
Even for a show that is about a time traveling police box, the science in this episode was horrible. The suspension of disbelief was so great, it really took me out of the show way too much.
How did the moon acquire extra gravity? It’s implied that the creature in the egg was growing (gaining mass) and ready to hatch. Great. So how did it increase in mass (and also density)? Eating? What was it eating? Unless there was suddenly a gazillion asteroids crashing into the moon, there’s no way to gain mass. They could have at least done some hand waving about interdimensional argle bargle. But they didn’t so it sounded dumb.
The spider creatures were pretty awesome until they said they were bacteria. lolwut? Just have them be spiders! Spider parasites would be cool. Jumbo single celled bacteria that takes the shape of a spider and spins web? Come on!
Every single human agreed that we should kill the egg. Every single human. When has every single human agreed on anything? Lazy writing. And when their wishes were denied? No aftermath, apparently. Just happiness and humans spreading out over the galaxy. This is up there with the ending of Battlestar Galactica and suddenly everybody agreeing to give up technology and live like the Amish. No, sorry. Not happening.
Where did all the egg debris go after hatching? I guess it didn’t strike the earth and cause an extinction level event. So that’s good.
And then a new egg that happens to look exactly like the old moon comes out a few seconds after the creature hatched. Because, you know, then every Dr. Who episode about a future earth that did have a moon would be nitpicked. I’d prefer a timey wimey explanation for why the moon came back than what they gave us.
Man, as a long time fan of Dr. Who, I have to say the current season is full of some major stinking turds. Time to sink this one down the memory hole. At least Time Heist was good.