The second half of Series 8 (Eps 7-10) is populated with a bunch a new writers/directors who are as of yet unproven when it comes to working for Doctor Who. It's an attempt from the show-runners to inject fresh blood into the show, giving new writers the reins to let themselves loose with the unlimited scope of the show. 'Kill The Moon' is the first of these episodes and newcomer Peter Harness has crafted a morally complex tale that will undoubtedly have major ramifications on the rest of the series.
The first half is chock full of atmosphere and verging more on the scary side of Doctor Who. The thing that becomes immediately apparent to the viewer right away is how good this episode looks. The moon actually looks like the moon! This is a result of some great location shooting in Lanzarote, it's volcanic wastelands seem perfectly suited for the moons surface and give the show that cinematic edge. Newcomer Who director Paul Wilmshurst has a great visual eye, he perfectly captures the eerie, cobweb infested moonbase as well. The moon spiders are quite terrifying for arachnophobes such as myself, largely due to some spectacular sound work of them scuttling in the shadows. Inspiration has definitely been taken from 'Alien', they even have a small second mouth! They're also unusually vicious for Doctor Who, the episode quite clearly shows a shot of a redshirt's spacesuit lashed open, ribcage bones exposed. Unfortunately the spider threat gets diminished somewhat by their embarrassing weakness: dettol bacteria removal. It's a fun joke but immediately diminishes their scare-factor for me. It's a shame but like most episodes of Moffat Who they're not the focus here.
Courtney was another addition to the episode, even if she didn't really contribute much outside comic relief, admittedly something this episode needed. She's a nice addition who doesn't come off as annoying (thank god) and I liked all of her scenes.
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| Moon walking. |
Based on the first 20 minutes alone I would've called 'Kill The Moon' a horror-tastic base under siege story but the episode takes a stark turn when it reveals what is causing the moon to become unnaturally heavy lately: 'The moon...is an egg!' explains the Doctor. 'And it's hatching...' Science be damned, eh? So they have two options: blow up the moon, destroying the alien baby inside or let it hatch and see what happens. Both options are potentially catastrophic for the human race, so what to do? Clara turns to the Doctor for help but he's having none of it. 'This is humanity's decision' he claims, and then buggers off in the TARDIS, leaving Clara, Courtney and Lundvik stranded on the moon with an impossible choice to make. This is a brilliant twist, in 'The Waters Of Mars' the Doctor tries to leave the members of Bowie Base alone but eventually recedes, changing history in the process. Here the Doctor DOES leave the humans to their own devices, in both cases you can argue he goes to far. Interestingly now the Doctor is out of the picture you have no idea what's going to happen, either choice could change the future of humankind forever. Hermione Norris is pretty compelling here, Lundvik has some really great points to counteract Clara's arguments.
So what does Clara do? She tries to do it democratically, sending a message to earth asking them to vote via lights on/off whether they want to destroy the creature or let it live. This is a pretty dumb idea, what about the side of the earth that's in the daytime? And everyone on the dark side should be asleep by now so how could they 'vote' if all this is happening while they're in bed? Also the entire planet earth managed to coordinate together in under half an hour? BULLSH*T! *SIGH* let's just let that go, okay?
The result is unanimous, mankind wants to blow the motherf*cker up (or at least the people controlling the electricity grids). But Clara overrules humanity's decision and presses the abort button at the last possible second, so....f*ck democracy? The Doctor shows up again and takes them back to earth to see the outcome. Clara made the might choice, the creature bursts out of its eggshell (handily disintegrating so no moon chunks come flying at earth) and flies away unscathed. In fact everybody wins, the baby somehow laid another egg that looked exactly like the moon it had just burst out of. HOW MIRACULOUS. Look, again that's kinda bullsh*t. Aside from the fact that your enjoyment of this episode largely rests on your suspension of disbelief there's no consequences here. Saving the baby is indisputably the right choice. The baby dragon pulls another moon out of it's ass, everyone is saved horaay! This is even good for the future of mankind, according to the Doctor:
'The mid 21st century. Humankind starts creeping off into the stars. It spreads its way through the galaxy to the very edges of the universe and it endures to the end of time. And it does all that because one day in the year 2049, when it had stopped thinking about going to the stars, something occurred that made it look up, not down. It looked out there into the blackness and it saw something beautiful, something wonderful that, for once, it didn’t want to destroy. And in that one moment the whole course of history was changed.'
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| Spot the odd one out. |
It's too tightly wrapped up, to neat. And the science holding this thing together is wafer thin at best. In 'The Waters Of Mars' the Doctor suffered for his actions, his arrogance directly causing Adelaide Brooks to commit suicide. That had real emotional weight, and could hardly be considered a happy ending. That episode had balls. The consequences here is Clara abandoning the Doctor but that would have happened regardless of her decision. Anyway point being: Clara made the right choice while the rest of humanity chose poorly. This is all down to the Doctor's influence (if he's to be believed) but he has gone too far to prove his point. So Clara flips out at him: 'It was cheap, pretentious and bloody ignorant' she sobs, threatening to slap him so hard he'll regenerate. This entire scene was amazing, echoing Martha standing up to Doc No 10 in Series 3 only on a much larger scale. Clara is outright furious with him, and the Doctor doesn't seem to register why. You can see where he's coming from but he knew the 'correct' choice and knew that she would choose correctly, he just didn't tell her that. So Clara is 100% justified in telling him to f*ck off and leaving, a first for a Who companion. She'll obviously be coming back at some point but if the trailer for 'Mummy On The Orient Express' is any indication it won't be any time soon.
Look, this episode has holes. The science is wonky at points, the outcome is wrapped up too nicely and the Earth voting via lights was a dumb idea even if it resulted in another cool slo-mo-let's-run-down-the-corridor explosion scene. But the social debate, acting, direction and Clara confronting the Doctor are elements to good to ignore, it looks and feels like hard sci-fi even if it creaks around the borders, and it's something that TV needs more of. So for that alone I commend Peter Harness, it's a ballsy début and his eagerness to push the boundaries of the show has me eager to see him again next season.
Positives:
+ Intriguing moral dilemma
+ Excellent location work
+ Creepy spiders
+ Courtney was fun
+ Unpredictable
+ Clara's outburst
+ The Doctor's dickery
+ Cold Lundvik
+ Like 'Listen' it's trying to do something different, pushes the boundaries of the show
Negatives:
- The moon dragon laid another egg, REALLY?
- The whole 'turn your lights off/on' made no logistical sense
- Painfully bad 'science'
Overall Score: 8,5/10
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