They’re kidding with this one, right? Kill the Moon is a
joke; they just want to see if the audience is paying attention. Right? They
cannot be serious with this one. Please tell me, Gary, that they are not
serious with this one.
I mean, the science is crap; but that’s only the start. If
it were only that. Who knew after all these years that we had the makings of
one giant omelet in our night’s sky? It might not be cheese, but that’s a lot
of egg that could be feeding the world if we only thought to crack it open. I
could accept this more easily, crap science aside, if we were not talking about
our moon. This is yet again an instance where Doctor Who would have been much
better served if it did not insist on being Earth-centric. In this case
familiarity is breeding much contempt. It’s not just the many telescopes
trained on the moon or the many moon rocks and samples that have been studied
or the myriad of scientists who have made the moon their life’s work; it is
that the Doctor himself has been to the moon many times, and many of those
times have been after the year 2049, and he never noticed? He never realized
that the moon of 2070 in the serial The Moonbase (and let’s not forget that Polly
was on the moon long before Courtney) was different than our traditional moon?
He never detected that the Sea of Tranquility, for instance, was missing? Or
are we to believe that the egg this mythical creature lays is identical to the
old one down to the last crevice and crater? And if the Doctor did know about
the events that take place in our current story all along, he never mentioned
the fact? Crap science aside, the Earth’s moon actually being an egg that
hatches in 2049 is one giant secret that the Doctor Who universe has been
keeping.
More likely this is one time when the Doctor’s “grey areas”
claim is a flat out lie. Whichever it is, a secret or a lie, the Doctor comes
out badly. Either he is exceedingly dim or exceedingly cruel.
Clara doesn’t fare much better. She has charge of a troubled, self described “destructive
influence” teen in Courtney, and rather than getting her the help she needs
Clara exposes her to the Doctor. “I have a duty of care, okay? You know what
that is?” Clara asks this far too late and never considers its portent in
relation to her own actions. To be fair, the Doctor whisks the two off without
Clara’s consent or foreknowledge; but really, Clara should have known better
than to harangue the Doctor about his treatment of Courtney while they stand in
the TARDIS. Who let Courtney into the TARDIS to begin with? Much less left her there
unattended.
Instead of worrying
that the Doctor bruised Courtney’s fragile ego by telling her she’s not
special, Clara should be concerned with Courtney’s pattern of self deprecation,
unruliness, and irreverence. Rather than forcing a statement of ‘specialness’
out of the Doctor Clara should be looking for the root causes of Courtney’s self-destructive
bent and getting her the counseling she sorely needs.
I’m sorry, Gary. I should be able to look past all of these
glaring defects. I have many times. However, when the show deliberately steers the
story to suit its purposes, both long term and short, without consideration of
consistency or decency or credibility, I have to complain.
Perhaps I could overlook, too, if the adventure itself was
more compelling. I’m irritated from the start that a bratty teen yet again inveigles
her way onto the TARDIS (flashbacks of Nightmare in Silver). Courtney is more
palatable than Angie, though, so that’s a plus, even if she does get bored
while on the moon in the year 2049 when there is a mystery afoot—maybe she isn’t
so special after all but just a typical self-absorbed kid—but I won’t continue
down that road Gary. (Oh how I miss
Susan and her sprained ankles right about now. At least she was interested in
what was going on around her.)
The dark, drab moonscape doesn’t help, either. Oh, it’s
refreshing that they are not on Earth for a change (even if only as far as
Earth’s moon). And the second-hand astronauts they run across, the deadly
spiders, and the mystifying increase in the moon’s gravity (kudos to the yo-yo
test and great call-back to Doctor Four) do provide a decent framework for a potentially
engrossing story. But it all falls apart with the jaw-dropping inanity of the
conceit.
I’m not even sure what to call this. It could be a beautiful
and poetic creation myth of ancient lore; except it is disguising itself as a hard-hitting
drama and morality play of contemporary sci-fi. To loosely interpret my dad’s
saying, it just doesn’t rhyme.
“In the mid twenty-first century humankind starts creeping
off into the stars, spreads its way through the galaxy to the very edges of the
universe. And it endures till the end of time.” This was much better told in
The Waters of Mars with the inspirational story of Adelaide Brooke. That prior
story takes place a mere 10 years after our present—not a lot of time for the
shambles of a space program (if you are to believe our present story) to get
its act together to construct a viable base on Mars. So there’s that. Not to
mention that Adelaide Brooke is light years ahead in her inspiration, and since
she represents one of those Doctor Who magical fixed points that even the Daleks
respect, it really doesn’t matter what occurs in the narrative at hand.
Yet the Doctor continues in his Nostradamustry: “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.”
The “something occurred” is something that would occur
regardless of the Doctor or of Clara or of Courtney. Because if the trio hadn’t
arrived at that momentous moment Captain Lundvik would have most certainly died
along with her hapless crew and the creature would have hatched and laid its
egg and that is the end of that. The Doctor choosing that particular time to
materialize only muddies the outcome. He creates a false drama simply to
appease Clara (which by the way backfires but more on that later).
“It looked out there into the blackness and it saw something
beautiful, something wonderful, that for once it didn’t want to destroy.” Per
my previous point, humanity never would have wanted to destroy the “something
beautiful, something wonderful” if the Doctor had not interfered. For the most
part, humanity looks up into the stars with wonder and hope and awe. It does
not gaze up into the Milky Way and dream up schemes of mass destruction. Only
the Doctor imagines that. And it is only due to the Doctor’s interference that
humanity was ever given the choice.
Ah—the choice. Because, you see, the “it didn’t want to
destroy” statement is false. The entire planet (well, actually only the half
that faced the moon at the time—and how hilarious that the verdict comes in sports
stadium wave-like fashion, as though they coordinated amongst themselves who
would shut their lights off first and next and so on; and obviously every
individual on the planet—at least on the side facing the moon at the time—has heard
Clara’s broadcast; and let’s not think about all of the unoccupied buildings and
advertising and such that wouldn’t be as easy as a flick of the switch to turn
off—and let’s hope that Las Vegas wasn’t pointing towards the moon at the time)
voted for the creature’s destruction. And rightly so. Any sane person would
come to the same conclusion given the limited amount of information provided.
Presented as it is, in a black or white scenario, there is no choice. The
Earth’s future hangs in the balance and the only viable option provided is to destroy
the creature (never mind that killing the embryo is no guarantee and will
most likely result in status quo—which isn’t any great shakes what with tidal
waves and such occurring as it is) since Earth is never given full disclosure.
That’s on the Doctor.
Given the scenario in full disclosure, what the Earth should
have done is to wait for the egg to hatch and for the new being to lay its egg, and then send every
nuclear missile in Earth's arsenal to kill the living creature. Because a being as
large as a moon is a menace to the entire universe. Even if a vegetarian, the vegetation of the
entire Earth would be but a day’s repast. How long would it take for this thing
to lay waste to the galaxy? And that is only in its infancy. Who knows how big
it will become as it reaches maturity? And then imagine if by some miracle that
this entity doesn’t need any sustenance, what effect it would have on the
gravitational fields of any planet or solar system it happens upon? This is not
some miracle of life; this is a devastation of life.
“And in that one moment the whole course of history was
changed.” See points above re: The Waters of Mars, not to mention that if this
thing has really flown off to wreak untold harm there will be no more history to either change or
stagnate (again see points above).
“Not bad for a girl from Coal Hill School and her teacher.”
Really, Doctor? You did all of this just to make a point with Clara?
Lunkvik is the only one to get it right: “Look, when you’ve
grown up a bit you’ll realize that everything doesn’t have to be nice. Some
things are just bad.” Doctor Who, however, refuses to grow up. Doctor Who wants
to make everything conveniently nice, despite the crap science. And so we get
the serenity on the beach in the aftermath. No tidal waves. No monsoons. No
storms. Not even a breeze. Nothing to indicate that anything has occurred in
the sky as massive as what has gone down. (Tell me, has Disney taken stock in
the BBC?)
Clara gets it right to tell the Doctor to “clear off.” But you know, Gary, that Clara can’t commit to
anything. Her moment of anger is for effect only.
It seems this whole exercise in giant butterfly science is simply
to bring us to, “get back in your lonely, your lonely bloody TARDIS and you don’t
come back.” For whatever reason that the season arc wants to bring us here.
Kill the Moon—Gary, in this one—and I have to say it—Doctor
Who has laid an egg.
