Doctor Who "Kill The Moon" 10/4/2014

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I would argue that this is a family show like Star Trek.. Fun for nerdy adults and kids (maybe even those kids belong to those same adults).

 

If you ignore the writers complete lack of scientific knowledge and simply focus on the story, then this wasn't a bad episode. The doctor was actually being Doctor-ish in the episode. Unfortunately the number of things that make no sense in this episode (moon gains 1.2 billions tons overnight, newly born creature laying an egg, 100 nuclear bombs not cracking the "egg"), makes focusing on he story difficult to do.

 

1.2 billions of tons wouldn't make a perceptible difference in the force of gravity on the moon. Even if they were British billions. 100 nuclear bombs by the same token would be imperceptible to a lunar egg.

But if we're starting out from the position where "the moon is an egg", then any pretense at rationality is just silly, I guess. To tell the truth, I was more troubled by Clara heading out the door and the new girl moving in; I have grown really fond of Clara, I like her almost as much as I liked Amy Pond.

 

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It's the bottle of cleaner she was using to clean up her puke in the TARDIS.

 

I don't know, in that regard I think it was a step backward. I mean, since when did the Doctor believe in non-intervention, in letting people make up their own minds? If he felt that way, you'd have to delete about 90% of Doctor Who episodes ever made!

It seemed like a manufactured crisis that grew not out of the Doctor and Clara's characters, but out of the writers' need/desire to create a rift between them.

 

Yup, it was a disinfectant, which led to the realization that the "bugs" were really big germs.

 

It just happened to be in her backpack that she had with her on the moon.

 

He told Courtenay about the DVDs and to hold onto the console otherwise the TARDIS would leave her behind.

 

I don't recall that it just happened to be there...wasn't she in the TARDIS cleaning up when the Doctor and Clara came in? And then they went to the Moon?

 

I think the moon gaining mass was sloppy, as well as a new moon just appearing. And it could have been explained easily by the creature being inter-dimensional, and sucking in mass from another dimension: same explanation for the new egg.

 

I think what made Doctor Who special...and I have only watched since the reboot is that the show does not talk down to kids and that is what makes it enjoyable to kids and adults alike. I feel like this is dumbed down and a little disjointed. Even when we had a season story arc it was enjoyable to get there. I am not liking this season. I have liked every season up to this point.

 

Ignoring all the things that made no sense (hard to do), the thing that bothered me the most was how stupid this episode made Clara look.

The astronaut had a reasonable argument that not killing the creature may result in mass deaths on Earth, and Clara did not come up with any counter to that. But she decided that humankind should vote on it. And the vote said to kill it. So Clara ignores reason, ignores the vote that SHE called for, and just unilaterally decides to stop the astronaut from killing the creature, for no good reason and against the wishes of humanity. So, not only is Clara an airhead, she is an elitist.

Were the writers intentionally trying to make her look bad so that there are fewer fan complaints when they write her out?

 

I thought it would have been funny if the creature was hungry and looking for food after it hatched. Gee what can I eat... say that planet looks delish,lol

 

Well and the throw away line that seemed to say that when the moon got heavier it caused high tides everywhere at once. But that's not what would happen. The high tides would get higher, but the low tides would get lower because the additional mass sucked more water into the tidal bulge. But it can't cause the water to expand everywhere at once.

Lots of eye rolling "physics" in this episode. I rolled my eyes a lot, but the space dragon thing was pretty...

Oh, and because of the timing it appears only Northern Europe got to vote. After all the parts of the Earth that are in daylight during that 45 minutes can't effectively vote because you can't see whether they've got lights on or not. And the NASA World at Night shot they used has most of Africa already dark because in the late 20th century much of it isn't electrified - so minimal lighting to begin with.

 

I think the point is that she didn't deliberately/specifically bring the cleaner out of the tardis with her just in case she needed it. It just happened to be among her belongings in her backpack.

 

That's probably the most realistic thing that happened in this episode. Clara came up with an idea on the spot that turned out to have all kinds of faults with it.

 

Except it didn't...she specifically went to the TARDIS to clean up her sick.

 

Yes, she deliberately brought it into the tardis.
She did not deliberately bring it out of the tardis on to the moon.