# Doctor Who s8e7 - Kill The Moon



## Morrus (Oct 1, 2014)

Kill The Moon.  Looks like it starts getting more serious an less rompy from here on in.  From random rumours I've heard there's a "game changer" but I take that with a pinch of salt.   

[video=youtube;leGP3JXSSxQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=leGP3JXSSxQ[/video]

[video=youtube;WWZM_LccgMg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWZM_LccgMg[/video]


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2014)

So I loved Capaldi in this. I loved the character stuff. I liked the spiders.

I struggled very much with the physics. I'm not a physicist, but it really sounded like nonsense to me.


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## MarkB (Oct 5, 2014)

Pretty good, I thought. A few thoughts:


The main premise has to be taken with a large grain of salt.
 The Doctor's ability to directly perceive (as opposed to merely research) future history is something new, I think.
 The concept of time being fixed aside from a few "fuzzy, grey" bits is the reverse of how it's been portrayed previously in New Who.
 I was expecting the Doctor to get mad (or at least miffed) at humanity for mostly voting to kill the creature, instead he takes Clara and Courtney's actions as being more representative, and it's Clara who ends up getting angry at him.
 It looks like next week's episode will feature the Doctor finally getting round to sorting out that distress call he received back on Amy's wedding day. But will this be a Claraless episode?


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2014)

I think they're just avoiding repeating that "fixed point in time" line. That's all that grey stuff is.

Capaldi has been a dick the whole series so far. At this point, that's clearly deliberate: they want us uncomfortable with him. He's not friendly or charming. He's not a nice guy. We're not supposed to like him.

I might postulate that this is a misstep. But this episode confirmed my suspicions: it's deliberate and it's a plot element. The show acknowledges it and uses it. It's interesting.

The moon being an egg and we never noticed? Hmmmm.


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## Umbran (Oct 5, 2014)

Morrus said:


> So I loved Capaldi in this. I loved the character stuff. I liked the spiders.
> 
> I struggled very much with the physics. I'm not a physicist, but it really sounded like nonsense to me.




Oh, by the Powes that Be, that science was bad.  Baaaaaad.    And not in the "bad is good" way.  As Wolfgang Pauli might have said, it was "not even wrong."  Horrible.  It made me trip over it every five minutes.  Gah!



MarkB said:


> [*] The Doctor's ability to directly perceive (as opposed to merely research) future history is something new, I think.




Well, he's been *in* the future.  He should *remember* how it was. 



> [*] The concept of time being fixed aside from a few "fuzzy, grey" bits is the reverse of how it's been portrayed previously in New Who.




I agree with Morrus - this is just a variant of the "fixed points in time" concept.  Once he's in one of those moments, the future becomes indeterminate, and his memory therefore does not hold the answer to what happens.


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## MarkB (Oct 5, 2014)

Umbran said:


> I agree with Morrus - this is just a variant of the "fixed points in time" concept.  Once he's in one of those moments, the future becomes indeterminate, and his memory therefore does not hold the answer to what happens.




To some extent I can see that, but it falls some way short of the way it was described in early 9th-Doctor episodes, such as The Unquiet Dead, when the Doctor makes it clear to Rose that, just because they've both seen a 21st century in which the world is much as we know it, that doesn't mean it can't be invaded by genocidal phantasmal aliens in the 19th century.


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2014)

MarkB said:


> To some extent I can see that, but it falls some way short of the way it was described in early 9th-Doctor episodes, such as The Unquiet Dead, when the Doctor makes it clear to Rose that, just because they've both seen a 21st century in which the world is much as we know it, that doesn't mean it can't be invaded by genocidal phantasmal aliens in the 19th century.




I took it as that being exactly what he was saying.


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## HobbitFan (Oct 5, 2014)

Horrible episode.  Just horrible.


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## Richards (Oct 5, 2014)

Last week, I said "The Caretaker" was my least-favorite Capaldi episode to date, because of that crappy spider-legged goofy-robot.  This week, I am forced to revise my opinion, because "Kill the Moon" had a plot so horrifically bad I'm forced to put it in the same category as the Star Trek Voyager episode with the alien race who start out as adults and grow younger as they age.  Stupid, crappy, nonsensical concept!

So...the Moon is an egg.  It takes hundreds on millions of years to hatch.  The Doctor speculates that it may be a "one-of-a-kind" lifeform.  (So who laid the egg?)  And then it hatches, is born not only already pregnant (following the tribble life-cycle, I see), but so pregnant it's already able to lay its own egg...which is almost as big as the creature's original egg.

*Head explodes from nonsense overload*

I think I'm going to just quietly wait for the crack in the universe from the Matt Smith days to hit this whole episode and make it such that it never happened.  Hey, if it can get rid of Cyber-Kings rampaging through Victorian London and Dalek and Cybermen invasions across the entire Earth, maybe it can remove this Moon-Egg idiocy as well. 

All griping aside, I'm looking forward to next week's mummy episode.  And I'm not convinced we've seen the last of Clara just yet, especially if there's someone behind the scenes making sure she and the Doctor stay together.

Johnathan


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## MarkB (Oct 5, 2014)

Richards said:


> So...the Moon is an egg.  It takes hundreds on millions of years to hatch.  The Doctor speculates that it may be a "one-of-a-kind" lifeform.  (So who laid the egg?)  And then it hatches, is born not only already pregnant (following the tribble life-cycle, I see), but so pregnant it's already able to lay its own egg...which is almost as big as the creature's original egg.




Not to mention that it just spontaneously gains mass, without having apparently ingested it from any outside source. Why is it such a difficult concept to understand that mass has to actually come from somewhere - it doesn't just spontaneously appear.


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2014)

MarkB said:


> Not to mention that it just spontaneously gains mass, without having apparently ingested it from any outside source. Why is it such a difficult concept to understand that mass has to actually come from somewhere - it doesn't just spontaneously appear.




I don't mind that. Aliens in Doctor Who do weird things. They time travel and miniaturise people and teleport and shapechange and regenerate and read minds and all sorts of things which are clearly sci-fantasy, not physics. This one gains mass. Not such a big stretch.


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## Umbran (Oct 5, 2014)

Morrus said:


> I don't mind that. Aliens in Doctor Who do weird things. They time travel and miniaturise people and teleport and shapechange and regenerate and read minds and all sorts of things which are clearly sci-fantasy, not physics. This one gains mass. Not such a big stretch.




But, just upthread you seeem to suggest that the Moon being an egg that we don't notice was a bit of a stretch....

So, aliens doing weird things (like change gravity) is okay, but doing weird things (be present and mostly quiescent and we don't notice) is a problem?


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2014)

Umbran said:


> But, just upthread you seeem to suggest that the Moon being an egg that we don't notice was a bit of a stretch....
> 
> So, aliens doing weird things (like change gravity) is okay, but doing weird things (be present and mostly quiescent and we don't notice) is a problem?




Correct. You have accurately restated my tastes regarding realism in this episode.


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## trappedslider (Oct 5, 2014)

I thought Doctor Who tossed out the pretense of using real science as opposed to TV science back in the Classic era....


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2014)

trappedslider said:


> I thought Doctor Who tossed out the pretense of using real science as opposed to TV science back in the Classic era....




Obviously. The first ever episode had a TARDIS in it.

It doesn't have to be realistic. It just has to be sold well enough that you're willing to suspend disbelief. 

Sometimes it manages that. Sometimes it doesn't.


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## Crothian (Oct 5, 2014)

I was hoping the creature in the moon would be a space whale.


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## RangerWickett (Oct 5, 2014)

That would have been a nifty tie-in to The Beast Below.

I thought it was goofy to call the spider-thingies uni-cellular just so they could kill one with disinfectant. And while I'm fine with the moon being an egg that gains mass mysteriously and hatches into a space monster that flies away by flapping its wings, I found it against my preferences that:

a) the cracking moon could be heard across hundreds of thousands of miles of vacuum,
b) it left another egg behind within moments of flying away, and 
c) they show a *full moon* cracking from the shore 

in daylight

at an elevation in the sky when such a thing would be impossible.

It's okay to make stuff up, but don't get stuff _wrong_.


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## Umbran (Oct 6, 2014)

RangerWickett said:


> at an elevation in the sky when such a thing would be impossible.
> 
> It's okay to make stuff up, but don't get stuff _wrong_.




I'm going to no-prize that one....

The mass of the Moon was effectively changing.  Thus, it's orbit must also change.  It was seen as full, yet daylight, because it was now close enough to be seen by reflected earthglow...


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## Umbran (Oct 6, 2014)

RangerWickett said:


> at an elevation in the sky when such a thing would be impossible.
> 
> It's okay to make stuff up, but don't get stuff _wrong_.




I'm going to no-prize that one....

The mass of the Moon was effectively changing.  Thus, it's orbit must also change.  It was seen as full, yet daylight, because it was now close enough to be seen by reflected earthglow...


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## delericho (Oct 6, 2014)

Yep, a pretty terrible episode all around. Sadly, it's not been a good season at all.


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## Morrus (Oct 6, 2014)

The physics aside, I think this one looked gorgeous. The lunar terrain looked great, as did the Mexican moon base.


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## Mallus (Oct 6, 2014)

I think this episode's brilliant. Five out of five. An instant classic. The writing, acting, and direction/art direction are all wonderful.

As fiction it's very well & smartly constructed. As science, well, yes, it's nonsense.


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## Morrus (Oct 6, 2014)

Mallus said:


> The writing, acting, and direction/art direction are all wonderful.
> 
> As fiction it's very well & smartly constructed. As science, well, yes, it's nonsense.




I wouldn't go as far as you, but I agree that everything except the science was very good.  The lunar landscape, the spiders, the acting - even the little kid was good. The Clara/Doctor confrontation at the end was really interesting.

The Doctor has been becoming more and more of a dick this series, deliberately so on the part of the writers: they don't' want us to like him and I think we've hit the low point of that. Now I'm expecting some change in his attitude.

One exchange I loved near the beginning.  Clara tells him that Courtney has been using his psychic paper. The Doctor answers "What for?  To get into museums?"  That was classic.


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## Ryujin (Oct 6, 2014)

I liked the basic premise of choice. I quite liked the acting in it from all sides, except the kid. As someone with a fairly logical mind and trained in the sciences, the false physics made my brain ache.


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## Herschel (Oct 6, 2014)

The "science" was tossable, and I'm okay with that, it's not what the episode was about. 

We had maybe the best line ever in Doctor Who 'Tell me what you knew or I'll slap you so hard you'll regenerate!'

This is all about the characters and Clara is getting a lot more spotlight this season, and mostly doing well with it. I could do without the "boyfriend" stuff, but they also want young girls to like it too.


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## Herschel (Oct 6, 2014)

The "science" was tossable, and I'm okay with that, it's not what the episode was about. 

We had maybe the best line ever in Doctor Who 'Tell me what you knew or I'll slap you so hard you'll regenerate!'

This is all about the characters and Clara is getting a lot more spotlight this season, and mostly doing well with it. I could do without the "boyfriend" stuff, but they also want young girls to like it too.


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## JediSoth (Oct 7, 2014)

I like this Doctor. I like him a lot. I wouldn't want to travel with him, but I love watching Capaldi do his thing.

I half expected the moon spiders to be related to the Racnoss, though.


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## Umbran (Oct 7, 2014)

JediSoth said:


> I like this Doctor. I like him a lot. I wouldn't want to travel with him, but I love watching Capaldi do his thing.
> 
> I half expected the moon spiders to be related to the Racnoss, though.




I thought they were going to go with a reboot of Tractators.


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## Janx (Oct 8, 2014)

While the spider FX was cool, I thought it was lame that they were really bacteria.  Giant bacteria should look like giant bacteria.  Giant spiders should really be giant spiders.  It's like the FX department came up with one idea and the writing department wrote something else, and they just rolled with it.


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## Umbran (Oct 8, 2014)

Janx said:


> While the spider FX was cool, I thought it was lame that they were really bacteria.  Giant bacteria should look like giant bacteria.  Giant spiders should really be giant spiders.  It's like the FX department came up with one idea and the writing department wrote something else, and they just rolled with it.




I'm going to guess that they had the VFX for giant spiders lying around, and re-purposed it.  Standard BBC procedure, like a nod to the old days, really


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## Umbran (Oct 8, 2014)

Janx said:


> While the spider FX was cool, I thought it was lame that they were really bacteria.  Giant bacteria should look like giant bacteria.  Giant spiders should really be giant spiders.  It's like the FX department came up with one idea and the writing department wrote something else, and they just rolled with it.




I'm going to guess that they had the VFX for giant spiders lying around, and re-purposed it.  Standard BBC procedure, like a nod to the old days, really


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## Nellisir (Oct 10, 2014)

I couldn't get past the idiocy of the whole moon mass/density/gravity thing. And the spider/bacteria. There's making stuff up, and then there's just absolutely not caring.


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## Plane Sailing (Oct 17, 2014)

I'm really enjoying this Capaldi Doctor. I find his nature interesting and charming in its irascibility (reminiscent of Hartnell). A complete contrast in my mind to Colin Baker whose doctor was so annoyingly horrible without redeeming features that it drove me away from doctor who!


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## Mallus (Oct 17, 2014)

Plane Sailing said:


> I'm really enjoying this Capaldi Doctor. I find his nature interesting and charming in its irascibility (reminiscent of Hartnell). A complete contrast in my mind to Colin Baker whose doctor was so annoyingly horrible without redeeming features that it drove me away from doctor who!



Absolutely. Peter Capaldi also stands in contrast with Smith's Doctor. 

Capaldi is very charismatic without (necessarily) being charming. Which makes him perfect for the kind of exploration of the Doctor-as-a-character that Moffat & Co. are engaging in, the deconstruction and then reconstruction of a cultural icon hero. They tried to do the same with Matt Smith's Doctor, but it just works better with Capaldi (the move away from the frenetic pacing and direction helps, too).


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## Kaychsea (Oct 17, 2014)

I thought it interesting that it was all basically Clara's fault. From wanting the Doctor to tell the girl that she was special, he didn't want to lie to her so made her special. Giving Clara the answers she wanted would have negated all that. A nice example of a straightforward request having completely unexpected consequences.


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