Kill the Moon was a really tough episode for me. So many emotions and so much to consider … here’s the weekly review of Doctor Who‘s episode. Beware of Spoilers!
I am still not entirely sure what I expected from the episode after the promo, but it definitely wasn’t this. Basically, the Doctor doesn’t want to tell Courtney that she is special, so he takes her and Clara to the moon to make her special. Arriving on site, they find out that the moon is actually an egg and that whatever was growing inside is hatching now and may or may not destroy the earth and humankind. Now, you’d think the Doctor would come to save the day, but no – he disappears and let’s Clara make the decision. That’s what’s happened and here are my thoughts about it:
- I thought the episode was very gripping from start to finish! As I mentioned, I didn’t really know what to expect and the episode did surprise me on some parts.
- I hate spiders and those germ-thingies very much looked like spiders to me! They were gross and creepy, so I liked them without ever fully grasping their purpose.
- Courtney is a really, really lucky girl! Seriously, she got to come back? How awesome would it be to be her right now? She’s also a great comic relief sometimes (e.g. the Tumblr stuff had me cracking up!), but I don’t need her in every episode.
- Doctor, oh Doctor … I don’t know what to think about you … I can’t believe he just left Clara to make this decision. He very often seems so indifferent now and I am not sure I like that about his new personality. Yes, he sometimes wants to make us humans think about what to do and how to find the right way on going about things when we deal with something alien (just look at The Day of the Doctor or The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood), but did he really have to abandon her like that? I understand her anger and frustration with him, however, their fight at the end broke my heart.
- At the beginning I thought it was really weird that it had no consequences whatsoever that the moon wasn’t there anymore, but they resolved that nicely with the “dragon” that hatched laying another egg.
- There was no sign of Missy and Paradise this week. I’m a little disappointed …
- Finally something very marginal, but something I nonetheless keep thinking about. I wonder why Danny‘s day was so bad. The answer is probably perfectly normal, but with him I always think that there could be more to it. Still loving him together with Clara.
Overall, I enjoyed this episode very much. Next week, I think we might finally get an episode that is not centered around Clara. There might not even be a Clara in it. Not that I don’t like her, I love her (online personality quizzes told me several times that she is the companion I am most alike, so there is no other way than loving her for me)! Nonetheless, all throughout this season I thought Capaldi could really use an episode where the spotlight is solely on him. What do you think?
I have mixed emotions on this episode. I thought it was interesting, though I thought the whole moon-is-an-egg thing was a little hard to believe, and it was wrapped up a little too conveniently. And I almost felt that the germ-spiders were almost unnecessary. They didn’t play too much of a role in the story once we learned what was causing the moon to break apart.
I do agree with you that the part about the Doctor leaving and then his argument with Clara was heartbreaking. I’m hoping that this people-impaired-not-in-a-good-way Doctor will learn from his mistakes if he’s not too stubborn. And I’m interested to see what happens next week.
Also, I thought of something. In the second season of Torchwood, they hint at what the afterlife is like. How will they reconcile what we’re seeing with Missy and the Promised Land/Heaven/Nethersphere with what they portrayed there?
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I totally understand what you’re saying about the germs and the moon as an egg. I had my issues with that as well, because it’s such a weird thing to suggest. My biggest issue was the fact that the destruction of the moon had no effects on earth whatsoever. Yes, there was another egg layed right after, but it’s still weird. I guess, in the the end I just cared about the surrounding story more than about that, so it didn’t bother me as much.
Next week looks interesting. Do you remember the episode where Eleven takes Rory and Amy on an adventure after their wedding and he gets a phone call? I think someone described the “Mummy on the Orient Express”-situation to him in that call.
Although I’ve watched all of Torchwood, single episodes haven’t ingrained themselves in my brain as much as they do on Doctor Who
But it wouldn’t be the first time that the two shows don’t entirely correlate.
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True. And I’m not sure which episode you’re referring to when you talk about Eleven getting a phone call. Are we talking about the Christmas Carol special?
Anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens in the next episode. It doesn’t look like Clara might be in the episode, but it appears Danny Pink will be. Will Mr. Pink take a boys’ trip in the TARDIS with the Doctor?
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Nope, that’s not the one I meant. I’ll try to find it and get back to you!
What? Danny is in the next episode? I didn’t see him in the promo.
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I looked at the Wikipedia page for the episode. Not much there, but Clara isn’t listed in the cast, while Danny is. I draw my own conclusions from that.
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Okay, I didn’t look it up yet. Interesting! I wonder what that’s about.
I found the episode. It was “The Big Bang” right at the wedding reception of Amy. I quote from Wikipedia: “The Doctor receives a telephone call alerting him to the presence of an escaped Egyptian goddess on the Orient Express, in space. He tells them that this will have to be goodbye.”
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Ah. I bet you they will relate back to that episode at some point on Saturday.
Then again, maybe they won’t. The Fourth Doctor once said he started the Great Fire of London in 1666, but it was showed that the Fifth Doctor did that a few years later. With a time travel show, you can deny your past in so many interesting ways.
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Well, I guess we’ll see next Saturday 😉 this season is awesome, but I hope they’ll soon reveal the mystery about why the Doctor has this face and what’s up with the whole Missy business.
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And I hope they’ll maybe come up with some better stories. I feel like most of them haven’t been very good this season.
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Hmm, I know what you mean. Overall, I think it was a good season so far, but nothing that really struck me or surprised me. I wish there would have been one storyline that was absolutely memorable and perfect. To me, it just feels like the balance is a little off and that it isn’t enough about the Doctor.
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We still have 5 more episodes left and then a Christmas special. Who knows? We may see something yet. Fingers crossed and hoping for the best.
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Your words in Steven Moffat’s ears!
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I like it!
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I loved the episode to pieces. It hearkens back to many early Tom Baker-era stories (between 1975 and 1977), with the yo-yo business, Clara’s asking why don’t they just leave since they know the moon isn’t going anywhere, and the Doctor’s “You must help yourselves” philosophy, all being almost direct quotes from Tom Baker stories (indeed, per WIkipedia, the episode writer put all this stuff in at Steven Moffat’s direction). That’s one of my favorite eras of classic Who, and I think Capaldi and Coleman and co. put an epic modern spin on it.
The first half was scary, and the second half was a really intense debate. I loved every second of the story.
As for the Danny stuff… I think he was talking about having had a single bad day that ruined being in the military for him. Without any foreknowledge of what’s coming next this season… I feel almost certain that Moffat will write an episode where we SEE what happened to Danny. And that this hypothetical future episode will help the first episodes of the season make a LOT more sense in retrospect …
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Another reason for me to finally get on to watching the Classic Who episodes …
The first part almost scared me as much as Listen did and Listen was really creepy in my opinion. I really liked the episode as well!
Oh, that’s one way of thinking about what happened and what will happen to Danny. I thought he was talking about that particular day and not about something in the past. But I bet you are right and Moffat will slowly but surely reveal what happened to him.
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I’m finally catching up to Doctor Who :).
So, I have a few problem with this episode: that egg has been around for millenniums and just started to gain weight a few years before?!
Spider-germs things? really?! this one really bothers me, because no unicellular beings can be that diferenciallized – I won’t even mention the mass!
The egg hatches and lays an egg of it’s own?!
I’m on the Doctor’s side: he allowed Clara to make a decisions without further information, because that’s how things are in the real world – you don’t decide to do or not to do something because you already know the outcome. So I love Clara, and I loved her speech, and I even get her side a bit, she was hurt and scared, I give her that – but she wasn’t entirely wright and overreacted a bit… a lot.
The other thing that bothered me was the lack of consequences all around… but that a general problem with TV these days, and was always a problem with DW
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I actually didn’t have as many problems with he egg-thing as you did. Maybe it’s because it’s not an earthly egg. We don’t know how alien eggs work, maybe they are different. But I did find it weird that there were no consequences when the egg was gone for a while.
I’m sorry, but I am all on Clara’s side. Decisions have to made and they can be tough sometimes, that’s true, but he didn’t have to just leave her and let her believe he abandoned her.
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but if he stayed, she would have never have felt that she needed to be the one to make that decision, you know?! I’m not saying that she’s completely wrong, but had he stayed, wouldn’t she expect him to do it?
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Not necessarily, it is her planet after all and if she didn’t like his decision, she would have fought him. But this way he sort of broke her trust in him.
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I just don’t see it like that…. =\
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That’s okay 🙂 we don’t always have to have to same opinion, do we?
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nop 😀 That’s what makes discussing stuff fun 😉
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Exactly 🙂
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[…] that before? Just to name some recent examples, I will give you Clara and the moon egg story in Kill the Moon, where she has to decide whether to kill the creature that is supposed to hatch from the egg or […]
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