#32 Doctor Who - Kill the Moon

Thought this was going to be a 4 issue test of Doctor Strange? Well unfortunately #4 arrived later than I'd anticipated and I didn't know if I'd get it done in time. This one has been ready to go for a while, so dive into my re-review of Doctor Who - Kill the Moon

It’s January, so it’s time to look at 2 Doctor Who episodes. The first might be familiar to long term fans of this blog because I reviewed it a year ago. The review consisted of me mostly laughing at a particular plot point which we’ll get to

So why this episode? Well, I’ve given the episode time to stir in my mind a bit, I’ve read and seen other reviews of the episode and there’s a hell of a lot more wrong with it than just the bullsh*t I was laughing at in my original review.

So, how much worse is it than I remember? It’s bad, really, really bad. Let’s take a look

We open on the moon in 2049 where Clara is making an important call to Earth, saying they’re faced with an “terrible choice:” an innocent life vs the survival of all mankind. So, we’re less than a minute in and we come across our first problem. That’s not even a difficult choice, the needs of the many and all that… Apparently the Doctor’s gone and the reasons for him doing so are pretty stupid but I’ll get to that.

Anyway, have I mentioned how much I really enjoyed the new opening title sequences for the Capalidi era? Because I still do love them. We cut back to the relative present day where Clara is talking to the Doctor about Courtney Woods, who will be filling the unnecessary role of ‘annoying kid sidekick’ for this episode.

You know, having kids in Doctor Who kinda worked with Matt Smith, Matt’s Doctor had a particular chemistry with kids, he sort-of embraced his own childish sides, he could connect with them and that created a sense of fun that meant I could overlook their acting. Capaldi is intentionally the opposite of this and when he can’t connect with them it’s up to the child actor to shine on her own and man is this rare in Doctor Who. I mean, I think the closest I’ve ever seen is Kenny from School Reunion but bear in mind he was a minor character with the focus very much elsewhere. Incidentally this was initially written as a Matt Smith episode.

Apparently Courtney’s been using the Doctor’s psychic paper as fake ID which leaves me with numerous questions.
1) How did she find it?
2) Did the Doctor just leave it lying around?
3) If not, how did Courtney steal it off his person or worse get into the TARDIS?

4) How the f*ck did she know what it was? (I can’t remember whether he used it in the Caretaker, that episode was boring)

5) How did she know how to use it?

The reason for all this. The Doctor told her she wasn’t special. Oh for f*cks sake! Is this how you think kids, even teenagers act? That they’re constantly looking for approval and will go into hissy fits if one person disapproves. Well, for some people that’s probably right but not a good stereotype to enforce. And no, Clara, IT WILL NOT AFFECT HER WHOLE LIFE, she WILL get over it. Unless she has some severe f*cking issues!

They enter the TARDIS to find Courtney on the phone. OK, how did Courtney get into the TARDIS? I don’t recall the Doctor ever having to make an effort to lock the TARDIS, except for that daft scene in The End of Time. So it should’ve been locked but there is no f*cking way a child is getting into a locked TARDIS if it was, the alternative is she had stolen a key. F*ck that too.

She has antibacterial spray and travel sickness pills for her next voyage on the TARDIS, she threw up last time. Clara says she isn’t going anywhere and tells the Doctor to just tell her that she's special. Just a heads up: Clara is going to nigh unbearable for parts of this episode. Courtney says “do you really think I’m not special?”

Grow up! You’ve known him for all of… however long it’s been since the last episode. He’s a freakin' Time Lord, when you’ve seen the inner workings of time you generally don’t think that particular human beings you don’t know very well are special. Even for the Doctor it’s a stretch.

The Doctor asks if she’d like to be the first woman on the moon, so she’d feel special (that's totally the same thing, right?). So they travel to 2049. I’d like to remind you that in… whatever year it was but definitely before 2049, the Judoon teleported an entire hospital to the Moon. Martha Jones and at least a few dozen other women were on the moon. OK, so none of them exactly went onto the moon’s surface but that’s semantics.

I’m only 3 minutes into this episode… Help!

They arrive on a space shuttle approaching the moon. They feel as though they’re under normal gravity which has the Doctor intrigued. The explanation will be really really f*cking stupid, but you probably already know that if you’ve seen my other review. Hold on in there, I’ve got a big rant about it coming.

They’re standing around 100 nuclear bombs. Damn it, you’ve made me go on another rant. 100 nukes, 100 NUKES! Those things are massive, how do they all fit on 1 shuttle? How do you ensure they’re not leaking and affecting anyone on board? How the f*ck do you acquire 100 nukes? No single country has that many. How the f*ck can you afford to send 100 nukes into space, sending anything to space is expensive but even in 34 years I doubt it’d be that much cheaper.

They’re about to crash land onto the moon with some pretty appalling CGI, which doesn't bode well for all the nukes on board. Guys, get back into the TARDIS, you probably won’t even feel it in there! But no, they decide to hold on some netting around the nukes. Great plan…

So the ship crashes and the CGI thankfully disappears from view, the nukes are fine, somehow. The crew of the ship come out and confront them in a classic Doctor Who mis-understanding bit. The Doctor (somehow) convinces them not to shoot them. I say somehow because he acts like a crazy eedjit the entire f*cking speech, more evidence that this was a Matt Smith episode in disguise.

The Doctor asks what’s wrong with the moon, he replies that the Moon has put on weight.

Wrong! Increase in weight does not equal increase in gravity. Gravity is not measured as a proportion of weight. Gravity provides a (near) constant rate of acceleration on an object. And of course there’s the other problem. The force that 2 objects have on each other is dependent on their mass and the distance between them. The moon getting heavier means that the gravitational pull of the Earth on the Moon is getting stronger. If the increase in weight is as significant as they claim it is, the Moon would’ve been forced out of orbit and would’ve crashed into the Earth, resulting in the Earth’s destruction. In other words, I’m calling bullsh*t on that

Now in the one thing I think is scientifically accurate, the Moon’s gravitational pull on the earth has increased, causing tidal waves, mass destruction, the sort of the thing they don’t have the budget to show us on this show. Oh and the Captain of this ship, Lundvik, she’s the voice of reason in this episode. The other two are redshirts, there to die before the end of the episode.

Their plan is to blow up the Moon with those 100 nukes. I’ll get to the issues with that later. So, the shuttle door opens and as per the Doctor’s promise, Courtney gets to step out first and here’s a line for the history books

“One small thing for a thing, one enormous thing for a thingy thing”

Thankfully they can just pretend that never happened, and I will shortly do the same with the help of a brick wall

So, they head to a Mexican mining station where something supposedly happened. OK, they find the space shuttle was second hand, great. Quick question: Why didn’t the Mexicans have a shuttle prepared and ready for if they actually found something worth mining on the moon? We find out later that they had to spend 10 years creating another one to send this crew up. Anyway, one of the red-shirts is sent to prime the nukes. So we’re down to one superfluous character.

Oh and the station is covered in cobwebs, that won’t make any sense in a minute. Courtney screams as she finds one of the Mexicans’ space suits wrapped up in cobwebs. Apparently the power was shut off. OK, I know this is convenient for the plot because there’s no way the station’s power would’ve lasted 10 years but… Who the f*ck turned off the power?

Clara tries to comfort Courtney after that in one of the few scenes with Clara that’s actually half decent. The power comes back on, which includes life support like air to breathe. Which leads me back to my earlier question, who thought turning off the power was a good idea? They take off their helmets to conserve air, given that the air has been inactive for 10 years, that may not have been a good idea.

The Doctor searches their systems and discovers that the Mexicans did not find any minerals on the moon at all. I’ll just assume you know why that’s stupid and move on. The Doctor eyes some photos which show cracks in the moon. They’re getting bigger, much bigger. The lights begin to flicker for some reason and the ground shakes. The guy who went off to prime the nukes dies.

With the lights now off for some reason, everyone’s on edge from the sound of crawling. It’s a giant moon spider. They back away from the door but it’s locked. The Doctor deduces that it’s blind but can sense fast movement. They try to move past it slowly but they’re interrupted by the arrival of the other redshirt. He’s killed, but power’s restored and the once locked door opens. That is a cr*ppy lock right there. The others use his death as a distraction and escape through the once locked door.

The door closes and somehow Courtney is trapped. For reasons that make no sense suddenly Courtney isn’t feeling the effects of gravity. The Doctor breaks open the door’s window and tries to use a yo-yo to reel Courtney in, but the gravity decides to restore just at that moment. Courtney is about to be attacked but she squirts the spider with her anti-bacterial spray, killing it.

So, the Moon spiders are bacteria. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment. THE MOON SPIDERS ARE BACTERIA! No… just no. There is no way that creature is single celled, it has legs, it looks like a giant spider. It’s not bacteria! Don’t be f*cking stupid! Also, where the f*ck do single celled organisms produce all those cobwebs.

Courtney decides that she wants to go home. And fair enough to be honest, that experience is likely to scare someone so young. Courtney is sent back to the TARDIS. Clara thinks they can leave as clearly the Moon doesn’t break up. Ah, I see she’s back to being annoying now. The Doctor says it could be a different moon or hologram or just about anything. There are moments in time he can’t see because… The plot says so.

They head out and find the corpses of the other 3 Mexicans. Apparently the moon has put on 1.3 billion tonnes. I’ve still got plenty to say on this subject but not yet. They’re attacked by the Moon spider; I’m not calling it a germ. It’s sent away by the sunlight because that’s “the best disinfectant there is.” No, no it isn’t. Disinfectant is the best disinfectant; the sun provides the heat that germs actually quite like. Not up close, obviously but don’t be f*cking stupid, Clara. And to be honest, it’s not the fact that she says it, it’s the fact the Doctor agrees and she’s supposedly right that’s irritating.

They find that they are hundreds of those creatures hidden in the cracks, he drops his yo-yo down there and discovers amniotic fluid, we’re almost at peak level stupidity and we’re not even half way through the episode yet. The Doctor tells the others to go whilst he dives into the crevice, into the fluid. Clara makes contact with Courtney, who’s putting photos of their ‘grand adventure’ on Tumblr, of all places. Why not Instagram? That’s a place designed for photos, Tumblr is a blogging website.

The ground shakes and the shuttle falls into the abyss, the Doctor comes out, kinda excited about the ordeal. They head to the mining base because they have nowhere else to go and are running out of air and we get our big zinger. The Moon is an egg.

Right, I’ve already ranted about some reasons about why this is stupid, but let’s add to this. Conservation of mass says that mass cannot be created or destroyed, just changed. The moon cannot be getting heavier by any scientific means. The creature might be getting bigger as it approaches hatching but the creature has food (the amniotic fluid if I'm not mistaken) that it’s been eating. You cannot get heavier than the sum total of yourself and your food source. And they’ve already dismissed the bacteria adding the weight but it’d be nonsense anyway for the same reason. Also, are they suggesting that big creatures have big bacteria? Because that’s nonsense as well.

Also, why has this mass only now, after, in the Doctors own words, millions of years started to increase. If the weight was increasing because of the moon being an egg, even if that weren’t bullsh*t within itself, surely it’d be putting on weight gradually, not suddenly putting on 1.2 billion tonnes. 

Worried about Courtney, Clara wants to make contact, thinking that maybe the posts she puts on tumblr could help. The Doctor is furious about photos being made online. Please stop with the Doctor being quiet bullsh*t. He wasn’t quiet before and he isn’t now. Just stop!

Courtney seriously asks “is it a chicken?” Seriously, just be quiet now. The Doctor theorises that the creature is unique. This is supposed to add more weight to the whole innocent life vs potential destruction of Earth argument. It really doesn’t work. Why? Because what life would that creature have alone?

Lundvic asks “How do we kill it?” You’ve brought 100 nukes into space, how do you think? Clara is shocked at the idea of killing an unborn child and we’re suddenly taking a sharp turn into the very disturbing avenue of abortion. The unborn child being the moon creature in this, and the people of the Earth being the poor mothers being hurt and killed by it!

When Lundvik brings this up, Clara’s response

“You cannot blame a baby for kicking”

No, I’m not laughing, I’m f*cking furious! How f*cking dare you, Clara! There are not enough f*ck yous in the world to counter what you just said. You just declared the death of hundreds if not thousands of lives as an equivalent to a baby kicking! That’s disgusting and deplorable! Lundvic is the hero here, fighting to save lives. You and the Doctor may as well be villains. I’ll ignore Courtney since she’s young and naïve.

When Clara calls upon the Doctor’s advice he says he can’t help. It’s humanity’s decision and he shouldn’t get involved. Ok, 3 things. One: You’re on the moon, you’ve already got involved. 2) You clearly know more than you’re letting on, by not giving them everything you know, you’re getting involved and 3 and this is the most important. Because Clara and Courtney are from the past the lives of these people from the future aren’t quite ‘real’ to them, if the Doctor needs to exit this debate, so do they. Goodbye Moon.

Because of some DVDs or some such sh*t, the TARDIS arrives and Courtney joins the others, he enters the TARDIS and f*cks off. 

“What a prat” as Lundvic said. After some false tension Lundvic argues that if the creature forces its way out they’ll be huge chunks of the moon heading for Earth. Erm… pardon me here but… so would it be if you detonated the nukes, in fact it might even be worse, they could be radioactive chunks of meteor. I can see a million superhero origins already in progress.

But the proper argument. The creature’s first port of call would likely be the Earth. So the debate ensues and we know that Clara isn’t likely to have kids given her predicament next season and Danny’s death which is a pity because it'd be kinda hilarious to realise her children would suffer from her choice here. Lundvic arms the nukes, giving them one hour to choose their fate. They get communication from ground control, things are pretty bad down on Earth. Clara has an idea, to use the system to broadcast to Earth, getting those that want the moon to die to switch their lights off. Which means that only those with electricity, who speak English and are currently experiencing night get a vote. Likely those worst affected by the Moon will not get a vote

Thankfully for the sanity of the human race, they overwhelmingly vote in favour of killing the moon.  With seconds left, Lundvic prepares to detonate but Clara instinctively disarms the bombs like a f*cking moron. The Doctor arrives and takes them to Earth, an Earth that does not look like it’s been decimated by tides.

The Moon hatches, the eggshell disintegrates and the creature decides to overload the bullsh*t by laying an egg larger than itself, serving as the new Moon and then f*cking off. Back to the abortion metaphor: What’s just happened is 2 miracles. You could be in severe unbearable pain in pregnancy but thanks to a couple of miracles everything will turn out fine. And to top it all off, the Doctor forces Lundvic to actually thank Clara. Oh and apparently this is the moment where humanity decides to explore the stars.

Courtney’s going to become president of the United States. For now, though, it’s time for that argument that’s been brewing ever since the Doctor f*cked off. Honest to god I don’t have sympathy for either of them anymore.  The Doctor leaves as Clara seeks comfort in Danny. The f*cking end!

THIS EPISODE GIVES ME RAGE ISSUES!!!

This episode had potential if they stopped with all the bullsh*t. Just keep the bacteria as unexplained Moon spiders, cut out the 'Moon is an egg' plotline, get rid of Courtney and have a simple base under siege story. That part was by far the better part of the episode, even if it still had its stupid moments

The rest of this story was so, so dumb, so, so dumb. The amount of bullsh*t they pile onto you beggars belief, even for Doctor Who, which has had mixed relationships with science to say the least.

Then there’s the abortion metaphor. It’s entirely possible this was unintentional but man was the subtext really, really heavy. People die because people like Clara who see it as wrong to kill an unborn being exist. Whilst abortion is a serious issue and of course serious thought should be put into that option, opposing it in the way Clara is is ridiculous to the extreme and the bullsh*t that followed only cemented that viewpoint.

Wasted shots of CGI spiders near the end and false tension, some god-awful CGI with the spaceship. 2 pretty much superfluous characters and you have me at the end of my tether.

Rage Rating: 1000%

Next: Superhero movie

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