Rate "Kill the Moon"

You know the score. Watch, vote, post.

I'd have thought you'd work Moon River into the ratings.

It was nearly 2/5. But then I decided to have Breakfast at Tiffany's instead.

I didn't enjoy that at all.

It's the first time in several years that I've found an episode of Doctor Who objectionable.  I did not appreciate the abortion angle much at all, did not enjoy it being reduced to a decision among women (it takes both genders to tango, it takes both to take responsibility for having tango'd), did not enjoy that decision being over so quickly.  

If we're going to deal with that kind of subject and do so from an all female perspective, can we at least get it written by a woman?  

I thought Disruptive Influence should have been In or Out of the situation, not sidelined (even though that got us a Blink reference).  I would have enjoyed Disruptive Influence having a teeny bit more character development so we know her a bit better before she has to make decisions like whether to save the world or not.  I would also have liked her to actually make the decision and take it out of Clara's hands.

I was baffled by the moon as an egg.  Is that really what the Silurians were scared of?  They had spaceships and all kinds of tech, one likes to believe reptiles wouldn't have been scared by the approach of an egg.  Also, we know it's not an egg.  It's just not.

Nothing puts on 1.5 billion tonnes that quickly.  Is it having mass delivered by Amazon while no one is looking?  Is it eating Higgs Bosons? And how does it, as a hatchling, then lay an egg bigger than itself?

Single celled critters can't be the size of dogs and have distinct organs, like spinnerets, or teeth, and stay single celled.    

Gravity: on or off, please.  Not just off when it's convenient and oddly back on because of a yoyo.

Humanity doesn't look up and see a frakking great monster in the sky and go "oooooo, it's beautiful" after voting to kill it.  What they do is decide that it's too fecking risky to sit around on just the one planet because you never know when the moon is going to turn out not to be the thing you've been carefully observing for millennia.  What drives Humanity out into the stars is fear, not fluffy lovelyness because in 2043 they already know about the threats waiting in the stars, from Adipose to Zygons.

The things I liked: Peter Capaldi and the Doctor's interesting line in non-interference (but not his shirt).  I actually enjoyed Clara feeling hurt and betrayed and raw, I thought Jenna Coleman handled that really well.  I'm a fan of Danny Pink, both character and actor. 2/5 for the excellent cast (at least one of whom was sorely underused.  Can we guess which one?)

Awful. I gave it 1/5 as I gave Time Heist 2/5 and Kill the Moon was worse.

You cannot suddenly make the moon an egg. DW has always had dodgy science but that is just... What Dave said.

Did the hatchling actually fly away - with wings I mean - or was that my imagination? If it did, how could it?

After last week, it was great to see Capaldi properly written for again. Loved the Tena Lady gag, the homage to Starship Troopers and the Blinovitch line.

However Clara putting the moon's fate up to public vote was nonsense. Who does The X Factor. And Courtney Woods? No thanks.

Overall though, I'll give this 4/5 as I'm loving the anti-hero Doctor. Not sure my fellow Wrinklies agree, but that's life.

The" co="Ordinator wrote: I'm loving the anti-hero Doctor. Not sure my fellow Wrinklies agree, but that's life.

I'm fine with the Doctor as anti-hero (in many ways, he's always been that - Hartnell, Pertwee, Baker T, Baker C and McCoy all have that aspect to their performances) but here's what I'm not fine with:

Three women from the same family get together to discuss what to do about a potentially dangerous pregnancy. The male character, who contributed some genetic material to the process but who prefers to retain his freedom and isn't really part of the family circle, is part of the initial discussion. He announces that he has no intention of hanging around while they make their decision, and won't be there to support anyone during the birth (or whatever procedure they decide to go through with), but he does indicate that he thinks the ideal solution is to have the child and then put it up for adoption (and anything else would be wrong and stupid). Then he leaves.

As he goes, the eldest of the women (because when women make decisions we've always got to have them in threes and there always has to be a maid, a mother and a crone) calls him out on his behaviour but he leaves anyway because men can totally shrug off their responsibility.

And another thing!

We know that Doctor Who can't discuss abortion. We know this because the Doctor is fundamentally Pro Life. We've known this since Genesis of the Daleks, and because even the later versions of the Doctor try hard to give the bad guy an out. He makes a point of offering a peaceful solution to nearly everything, even when he's sure the bad guy will reject it. Because you have to try.

If he's pro-life to that extent, and he's also something of an authority figure, then there can't be much of a debate. In the end, the show has to not take innocent life or show innocent life being deliberately taken by the heroes. They can occasionally fail to save innocents, because you have to show the bad guys are bad. The Doctor and the Companion(s) are not murderers.

If we cannot discuss a subject by showing that both sides of an argument have the same weight, or may be viable alternatives, then what on earth is the show doing wasting valuable air time on the topic?

This season seems to be full of episodes that are dividing fandom. I wonder if some of that has to do with how the Doctor is being presented in this 12th form. Certainly, Colin's first season was a bit turbulent, and I'm seeing a few parallels between Series 8 and Season 22.

For me, the most interesting thing about Kill The Moon is the evolving relationship between Clara and the Doctor. Those final moments at the end of the episode are absolutely gold, and I think they point to some further smoothing out of Capaldi's Doctor before the end of this series.

The basic story was alright, but Dave has a point: the moral dimension of this episode smacked one upside the head. I can't bring myself to give it more than a 3/5, and it only gets that because I think it was beautifully shot. I loved those moon surface scenes.

Patrick wrote:: the moral dimension of this episode smacked one upside the head.

It's so clumsy that it buries the other dimension of the Doctor/Clara relationship: The Doctor genuinely does want Clara to see how complex the decisions are that he makes, and she suddenly realises how dependant she's become on him being there. It was a great, and terrible, moment for Clara. Coleman and Capaldi are brilliant in it. But not many people have seen that (or related it to how people in the Doctor's universe might have become dependant on "the man that usually helps") because of the poor writing and the appalling science.





I'm quite angry with this story for not being as good as the cast. So that's a nice thought. I'm so taken with Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman that I want only the best scripts for them, but Moffat said he was dialling back on slick and making things raw, so we have to expect a number of missteps. Next week looks like a lot of fun and I'm still basically frothy with excitement about the rest of the season.

I've never seen a vote like that before!