Doctor Perseus Reviews: "Kill the Moon" *SPOILERS* · 9:49pm Oct 5th, 2014
In this week's episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor takes Clara and Courtney to the Moon in 2049 and quickly discovers that something is wrong. The Moon is growing, spider-like creatures are emerging from under the surface, and things are not what they seem. With the Moon's destruction just around the corner, Clara turns to the Doctor for help and receives the shock of her life...
Sorry for the late review. I didn't have time to write one last night due to...reasons. So, Kill the Moon. This was an episode that I was definitely interested in. Since its airing yesterday, it's received a fairly divisive reaction from the fandom. Some love it. Some hate it. Some think it's stupid while others think it's ingenious. What are my thoughts? I loved this episode!
As always, let's start off with the Doctor. Oh boy. There were a lot of teases about how this would be the episode where we would really get to know the type of the Doctor that Peter Capaldi is and that he would do something that would shock both us and Clara. And, from where I'm standing, those teases were right. For the first half of this episode, Capaldi is being his expected great self as the Twelfth Doctor. It isn't until the second half of the episode where the fecal matter hits the bladed cooling device. To see the Doctor just up and leave, not wishing to have any part in making the decision that would decide the fate of the Moon Wasp, was like a slap in the face (but, strangely, in a good way). Once again, Capaldi's Doctor remains completely unpredictable. I knew he was going to come back for Clara and Courtney eventually but why and under what circumstances remained a mystery. It was a stark, frightening turn that really has me interested in seeing what lies in this Doctor's future.
Moving onto Clara, she was superb in this episode as well. It was nice seeing her remain protective of Courtney and the moment where she suggested that Courtney call her by her first name was nice. But Clara really got to shine in the second half of this episode. After the Doctor has seemingly abandoned her (for a second time, no less) she still remains clever and attempts to find a fair way to decide the fate of both the Moon Wasp and all of humanity. Like the Doctor said back in Deep Breath, she's brilliant under pressure. The method she used to make the decision was pretty smart, having everyone on Earth shut their lights on or off in favor of saving or killing the Moon Wasp. And even after everybody on Earth has voted to kill the creature, Clara just gives all of humanity the middle finger at the end and aborts the explosion. Then, everything erupts in one emotional argument between Clara and the Doctor at the very end. Throughout that entire scene, I actually found myself getting a bit choked up in response to seeing such raw emotion coming from Clara. Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi were simply amazing in this scene. When I first saw the scene, I was mostly siding with Clara. But now that I've thought about it more, I really don't stand on either side as I can understand both points of view. The Doctor really cares for and trusts Clara. He believes she'll always make the right decision in the end. He didn't want to be the one to decide humanity's fate. He wanted to leave that in the hands of humanity itself; and who better to help lead that decision than the most capable candidate he could think of? On the other side, Clara feels hurt because the Doctor gave her no warning about what he was going to do and no information about what would happen if the Moon Wasp were allowed to live. For all she knew, he had just up and left her to die (for the second time). She also found it cowardly that the Doctor, someone who has spent most of his life protecting Earth and humanity, didn't want to have any part in making the decision that would control humanity's fate. She felt hurt and betrayed and it's obvious that her trust and faith in the Doctor has been taken down quite a few notches (if any remains at all). I'm really looking forward to seeing how this conflict plays out throughout the rest of Series 8. Based on what I've looked up, Clara's not set to appear in next week's episode and the episode after that is going to be a Clara-centric, Doctor-lite episode. So it looks likes we'll be able to see how the two characters on their own deal with the falling out.
Moving on, I liked Courtney a whole lot more in this episode than I did in last week's episode. Her character was much more fleshed out and likable. I found it funny when Courtney took pictures of the Doctor on the Moon with her phone and began uploading them to Tumblr, which then lead to a pretty funny line from Lundvik: "My grandmother used to post things on Tumblr." I always find it funny when people in the future make references to our modern day websites and various other electronics like they're relics of the past (which they are from their point of view). I wonder if Youtube is still around in 2049. Sorry. Getting off topic. Moving on, I also found it interesting that Courtney apparently goes on to become President of the United States in 2049. Of course that raises the question of how a British girl can become the President but there's two possible answers to this. One, the law stating that only US citizens born in America can become President has been lifted by the time Courtney ran for office. And two, Courtney was born in the United States but grew up and was raised in England. Either explanation will work for me. Hermione Norris gave a good performance as Lundvik and Danny had a pretty nice scene with Clara at the end. I really liked how Danny, who himself isn't that crazy about the Doctor, convinced Clara that her relationship with the Doctor isn't over simply because he can still make her angry. There's nothing noteworthy about the rest of the supporting cast.
The spider germs acted as nice, creepy monsters for the episode. I really liked the sounds they made as they moved along and the reveal of them actually being germs from a larger creature reminded me of the parasites in Cloverfield. The twist about the Moon actually being a giant egg was another thing I didn't see coming but I thought it was a very interesting reveal. And, hey, if I can buy that the Earth's core is really a Racnoss spaceship then I have no problem buying that the Moon is really an egg holding a giant space wasp. I was also glad to see that the wasp left another egg/Moon behind. Along with great sound design, the episode also had great cinematography and did a fantastic job at making me feel claustrophobic and isolated.
Overall, I found Kill the Moon to be a splendid episode with fantastic performances, great cinematography, a few excellent twists, and an (enjoyable?) emotional punch to the gut at the end. This episode has really turned Series 8 in a new direction and I can't wait to see things develop from here! Kill the Moon will definitely go down as one of my Series 8 favorites! Next week's episode is Mummy on the Orient Express!
I could see why this episode would be divisive. I understand also why you enjoyed it. I liked it too.
I don't think the Doctor was being serious about that.
I'm on the side that I think Clara was being too harsh towards the Doctor. I mean I know the Doctor has spent like 300 years of his own life saving humanity throughout its history. But I'd rather humanity decide its own fate. And if I were the Doctor's companion, and he decided that I as a human should determine humanity's future rather than he, than I would accept that even if he's popped off. Though I still understand why Clara would be miffed by all this.
What did bother me though was that the Doctor left these three women the choice of whether or not to kill this baby moon wasp thingy for the sake of the convenience of humanity's future. (On top of that, when Clara stops the detonator, it says "ABORTED".) Now, it's not that I'm against the life-affirming message at the end. I'm all for that. I'm not even sure if that's what's really being intended here. If it was though, it seemed really heavy-handed.
Because isn't that just the ultimate expression of humanity? To ignore the popular vote and take matters into your own hands.
Also, the Moon being a giant egg fits with its history of being a freely floating planetoid until it was caught by the Earth's gravity at the end of the Silurian race's reign.
This episode was difficult for me to get through, because every time I was starting to get immersed it threw another wad of condensed bullshit at me, pulling me right back out and making me shout, "That's not how that works!"
I'm not a stranger to suspension of disbelief. For Doctor Who, you have to accept the existence of a 1000-year-old alien with a blue box that travels through time and space, just to get in the door, so it's not as if I'm unwilling - but the authors have to meet me half-way. They have to give me something to help rationalise the impossible or ludicrous or nonsensical, even is it's just a perfunctory, lampshade-hanging, statement that, yes, this is odd and contrary to our scientific understanding of how the world works, but the universe is big and weird things happen, and the doctor doesn't have time to explain right now. That's all it would have taken.
But apparently the writers couldn't be bothered, and so we're left with the impression that somebody slept through every single physics and biology lesson they ever attended, yet somehow felt qualified to write for a high-profile sci-fi show, and nobody on the staff could be bothered to speak up and say, "That's wrong, and worse, it's stupid."
I don't want to go on a detailed rant about every single "Windmills do not work that way!" moment throughout the episode, but there were quite a few, without any pretense at explanation or even mere hand-waving, as if the author honestly believed that this was how the world worked and expected us, the audience, to believe the same. That's not just lazy, that's insulting, and it distracts from and undermines what could have been a good story.
2571803
I encourage you to do so. Up until this point, I still don't understand the hatred for this episode in relation to the science. Whenever people complain about the science, they just go off about how bad it was...without actually giving any examples. I'm not trying to be rude or anything but your comment was a prime example of that. You complained about the episode going against scientific fact...and yet you didn't bother to provide any examples. How am I supposed to understand your point of view on the matter when you don't even go through the trouble explaining why you found the science to be wrong?
I love this episode for I personally found it to have an interesting, suspenseful, emotional story and I most likely will still continue to love it no matter what you say; but please tell me how you saw this episode to go against scientific fact. I urge you to do so. I really want to understand the point of views of you and everyone else who hated this episode but I never will if you don't explain your reasons. If you don't explain, it just sounds like you're spewing negativity over nothing.
2572378
Okay, that's fine by me. I didn't want to go into this, because I assumed it had already been discussed to death by others - but if nobody actually spelled it out, I'll be happy to do it. So, from the top of my head, without going back to rewatch episode, these are the points that stuck with me:
1) As the creature inside the moon grows, the mass (and thus the gravity) magically increases. Matter is apparently created ex nihilo inside this egg, but this unfathomable miracle goes not just unexplained, but completely unmentioned, as if the author actually believed that's what really happens inside eggs and therefore needs no explanation.
2) Large creatures can support large parasites, true, but you can't just take an existing life form and scale it up, expecting it to function at a scale that its body did not evolve for. And you especially can't call something a "germ" and claim it's single-celled, when it has very obvious multi-cellular structures in its body and exhibits physical properties that aren't possible with a single cell.
3) Humanity is incapable of blowing up the moon. We can't do it now and likely won't be able to do it 35 years from now; certainly not with a bunch of atomic bombs. The entire arsenal of the human race combined would be able to blast a nice, big new crater into the surface, but nothing more. The small fraction of it that you could cram into a space shuttle and lift off the planet? Forget about it!
4) If they could blow up the moon, it wouldn't solve the problem, because blowing something up does not magically reduce its mass any more than a creature growing inside an egg magically increases it. All you'd end up with would be the exact same amount of mass, exerting the same amount of gravity, orbiting the earth, only in pieces rather than one big lump.
5) You can't see how much of Earth's lights are turned on from the moon. Not without an actual observatory, which they didn't have in the episode.
5b) If you could see it, you wouldn't be able to tally what percentage of the lights are turned on without comparison images showing all lights on and all off. Off all the possible outcomes of this vote, the only one you could actually recognise just by looking is if all of humanity agreed unanimously to turn all lights off. Any other result would be completely unquantifiable, making this exercise useless as a way to get Humanity's decision.
5c) If you could tally it, that would be a really terrible and unfair way to poll the opinion of the human race. One half of the globe gets excluded right off the bat (minus the 1/24th of it that rotates into night during the one hour they gave for the vote). Better hope the night isn't currently passing over the pacific ocean, otherwise practically nobody gets to vote at all. Countries without a well-developed electric grid? Screw them; who needs their opinion? Countries with few centres of high population density big enough to generate noticeable light pollution? Screw them, too. How about people who never heard your broadcast because they were sleeping (it being night and all) with their lights off? How about people who needed the lights on because they were performing life-saving operations or performing vital functions? What if everybody in a city turns off their personal lights at home, but the handful of people who control the street lights and similar municipal lighting keep them blazing? What if it's the other way round?
There is so much wrong with number 5) alone that I better move on before I get stuck detailing every single aspect of how wrong-headed it is.
6) The enormous creature in the moon hatches and flies off, the egg's shell disintegrates harmlessly (its mass apparently disappearing down the same magic hole that the additional mass of the creature came out of), and it leaves behind a new egg to replace the moon. The result in the episode: Everything is back to normal, and the human race is inspired; Hooray! The result in real life: A massive disturbance in Earth's orbit around the sun; Catastrophic, nay, apocalyptic shifts in tidal forces exerted upon earth; The human race and most other life on the surface of the planet goes extinct... Hooray?
There were many interesting philosophical points to be made and dramatic character conflicts to be explored here - but when your entire story premise is based on the effects of mass and gravity between planetary bodies, perhaps you should get someone to write it who has at least a rudimentary understanding of how those things work. Otherwise those nice bits get drowned out by the noise of a million nerds facepalming in unison.
Edit: Another one that I remembered last night, just before going to bed:
7) The principle by which anti-bacterial spray works is apparently "germ-killing magic", which explains why you can use it on a germ the size of a mastiff and, instead of failing to do anything as a science-based spray would, it works instantly and leaves smoking holes like the world's most aggressive (and most fictional) acid.
There are probably a few more like this one, and it's likely that I would have ignored or forgiven it in any other episode - but once the basic premise upon which the story's tension rests was screwed up, there went my willingness to overlook minor silliness like this.
The tension and drama of a story are the motivation for the audience to suspend their disbelief - but that doesn't work if the tension itself is predicated on swallowing an even bigger whopper first. That's like someone attempting to lift himself by pulling on his own bootlaces.
Imagine if an episode started with aliens threatening the earth and you were all set to go along with that for the sake of the story. Now imagine the Doctor went on to explain that the aliens' plan was to stick a needle in the earth and pop it. Not some exotic, giant, anti-matter, space needle; just a normal needle. How seriously would you still be able to take the tension and drama surrounding this threat to humanity? How far would you still be willing to suspend your disbelief for its sake? How would you feel, if you were left with the distinct impression that the author didn't merely expect you to suspend your disbelief, but honestly thought that the earth, being round and floating, must obviously share all other properties of a balloon as well and surely the audience was already aware of this fact and thus understood the grave danger posed by the aliens' plan.
That analogy sounds really silly, I know, but that's honestly how I felt about this episode, when they specifically called attention to the fact that the gravity was clearly entirely wrong for the moon, setting up the mystery of the moon's increased mass - only trot out "Oh, there's a big creature growing inside it. That explains it."
What?! No, that doesn't explain it! That only shifts the question from "How did the moon gain mass?" to "How did the creature gain mass?" The only way you could try to use that as an explanation and expect it to stick is if you really, honestly believed that that's what happens when a creature grows inside an egg. And if you do believe that, then what the heck are you doing on the writing staff of one of the most well-known and widely watched science fiction series on earth?
The "explanation" for the increased mass, the proposed solution of blowing up the moon, the eventual resolution of the creature flying away and leaving a replacement moon egg - all of these betray a profound ignorance of the basic scientific principles behind mass, energy, gravity, orbits, and tidal forces. That would be sad to see, but not necessarily a killing flaw in most episodes. However, if these are the very basis upon which the episode's tension is founded, that's kind of a problem.
2572607
Thank you. I can finally understand what upset people about this episode in relation to the science. I still love this episode for the story, concept, and characters alone (if you've read my other reviews, you can probably tell that I'm one of the more positive, forgiving, optimistic Whovians you'll find) but I can at least now understand why some people can't. So, again, thank you.
2573714
I'm glad I was able to clarify this for you, and I'm glad to know that you were able to enjoy the good parts of the episode without getting distracted by all the "magical thinking" as I was. I'm not one of those grumpy "Stop enjoying things I don't like" type guys.