 |
| Lunar landscape shots; always a favourite. |
Education is a balancing act these days between hammering in facts and protecting the delicate sensibilities of the young and tactless so that you don't end up producing a generation of ill-informed neurotics. When one of her pupils is crashed into near-depression by the Doctor's dismissive attitude, Clara feels it incumbent on her to rectify the situation. Instead of an apology, however, the Doctor serves up a trip to the moon, which naturally leads to deadly danger.
The Good
- The gravity question was introduced in such a way that kids who get science can feel clever without overdoing it.
- The Doctor's insistence that humanity make its own choice was one of his stronger character moments of the season.
- The 'we have forty-five minutes to decide' at the start was a flat push for a sense of real time.
- Apparently, as the moon creature approaches term it spontaneously generates mass. I would have accepted a bad science explanation but there was no explanation.
- There were shades of 'The Beast Below' in the moon creature.
- Clara's 'I hate you' speech would have had a lot more weight without 'don’t you dare lump me in with the rest of all the little humans that you think are so tiny and silly and predictable'. It turns a valid point about the Doctor's high-handedness into a statement that she is better than everyone else.
- Spider-germ, spider-germ! Freaks me out to no end! It wasn't too bad, as the CGI was fairly obvious, but why have all those cobwebs and legs and shit for something that isn't a spider if not deliberately to freak out the arachnophobes. Also, points off for not even mentioning the Eight-Legs of Metabelis III (famed blue planet of the Actaeon Galaxy).
- Not much to theorise over for this one, unless Missy is the moon beast. That would be kinda cool, even if it didn't make any sense.
- Courtney: One small thing for a thing. One enormous thing for a thingie-thing.
Lundvik: So much for history. - Doctor: She’s fine. What are you, thirty five?
Courtney: Fifteen. - Clara: How can the moon die, though?
Doctor: Everything does, sooner or later. - Doctor: Listen. We went to dinner in Berlin in 1937, right? We didn’t nip out after pudding and kill Hitler. I’ve never killed Hitler and you wouldn’t expect me to kill Hitler.
- Clara: When did you get to become so wise?
Danny: Same as anyone else, I had a really bad day.
Clara's lambasting of the Doctor for asking her to make a decision is fairly typical of both this Doctor/Companion relationship and the show's recent direction. It was a harsh thing for the Doctor to do, but for a pivotal and undecided moment in human history, it felt like the right thing. Perhaps it was supposed to be another sign that the Doctor wants to vanish into the shadows of history, but it was also the only thing to do without imposing his alien will on the entire Earth. Even if he knew that the people below would be so scared that they would choose 'wrong', it had to be an incontrovertibly human decision to override that call. It's a shame, and more so because Clara's actual response is so 'me, me, me', when this is one of his few moments of moral authority in the series so far.
I know I keep coming back to this, but I think it is important that the Doctor stands as a figure of moral authority. He can do pretty much anything he likes given his intellect and the TARDIS, so it is only his morality that stands between him and the Master or the Valeyard. If that is in question, the show is in trouble.
The Verdict
'Kill the Moon' has some good moments, but overall is one of the weaker episodes of the series so far, and in particular Clara's final rant is likely to further anger the sizable anti-Clara faction in the audience. Just as the banter between Clara and Twelve is lovely when it works, when it doesn't it becomes truly aggravating.
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment