(807) Kill the Moon

As titles go, Kill the Moon is certainly the most interesting. In an attempt to show Courtney that she’s special, the Doctor takes her to the Moon to be the first woman to walk there. This episode is where the Doctor and Clara’s relationship goes through a bit of a rough patch. Being set on the moon it means that this cant be filmed in a field in Cardiff. The filming for this episode took place in Lanzarote where the 1984 story Planet of Fire was filmed and I think a title that was suggested for it was Return to Sarn which was clearly a title designed to mislead. The TARDIS arrives on a shuttle which has a lot of nuclear bombs on it and its clear that things don’t go well in this episode. There is a wonderful base under siege vibe to this episode which if you are a regular reader of this blog, will know that this is my favourite type of story. Apart from the darkness and the isolation, the big success of this story are the spiders that scuttle around the place. The sight of one scuttling around in the dark is quite good and also the image of thousands of them scuttling across the moon is one that works and is one of the lasting image from the episode.

At one point the Doctor decides that he is leaving the fate of the moon to Clara and Lundvik (Hermione Norris) which does seem like a bold thing for the Doctor to do. I honestly cant see Matt Smith’s Doctor or David Tenannt’s Doctor doing this so this is another example if more were needed that Capaldi’s Doctor is a grumpier version of his previous incarnations.

When Captain Grumpy turns up at the end I think that he is going to be Sergeant Smug and pretty much tells Clara to calm down and be less angry. I thought that was quite a good move for him and he is still Captain Grumpy but at least there showed a glimmer of happy.

The big revelation is that the moon is an egg and its about to hatch. This has been a great cause of controversy because people think that it’s a stupid idea. I don’t agree with that simply because what Peter Harness has done is come up with a novel idea for something that is so much apart of the Earth. You see various stages of it at night time and ever since the episode aired, I have looked up and jokingly thought that the moon might have put a bit of weight on. It’s such a Doctor Who idea that I cant understand why people have a problem with this aspect of the story. There were bigger problems with this story. Most notably that of Hermione Norris. The problem is that her character isn’t very well served in this. Her character isn’t very imposing and just blends in with the others. Another problem is Courtney because she wants to be called special, then when they are on the moon and things go wrong she decides she wants to go back home and then when it looks like things are getting interesting again she wants to leave the TARDIS. Never has a character changed so much in one short episode. Thankfully she leaves at the end of this episode and is never seen again and good riddance as far as I am concerned. However the biggest concern that comes up in this episode is the relationship between Clara and the Doctor because we are in the seventh episode of the series and yet there is something that doesn’t quite right between them. I would have expected them to have bonded by now.

There comes a decision about whether to blow it up or let the thing hatch. There is this big deal about the Earth deciding what to do. In the end it’s a bit pointless because the Doctor comes and rescues Lundvik, Courtney & Clara and they arrive on earth just to see the moon hatch. Moments later it seems to hatch a new moon and things seem to be back to normal.

I like Kill The Moon, there are problems with it but ultimately the debut story from Peter Harness has written a story that is effectively in two parts because the first half is scary as anything that has been seen in new Who and the sort of thing that would have been seen in the Philip Hinchcliffe era which is always a good thing. He is returning to write for the new series of Doctor Who and hopefully he will improve on some of the flaws that happened in this episode and the good point suggest that he might just be able to do that.