Dr. Who Series 8 Episode 7 - Kill the Moon
Added 2023-12-02 15:00:05 +0000 UTCEwww Spiders :D
Comments
Thank you for your comment :)
Nicologik
2023-12-07 09:36:16 +0000 UTCRe: tracking your ratings, to see whether your two low episode ratings would match mine. Well, that's the first one.
Andrew Vignaux
2023-12-06 21:46:22 +0000 UTC"Tell me what you knew, Doctor, or I'll smack you so hard you'll regenerate", Clara, "Kill the Moon" I don't like this story - I am now going to RANT. Please ignore if you want to. === RANT START === The main reason I don't like this story is the bad science. Now this could sound at bit odd: does a show that has a TARDIS and a regenerating Time Lord have "good science"? But, in these sorts of TV shows there are a certain number of things the viewer is happy to accept to set up the show in the first place. So, TARDIS [tick], Time Lord [tick], regenerations [tick], etc. The worst bad science I have in this story is that our moon is an egg with a huge space-dragon embryo in it. Now, you might think, "well, you just don't believe in huge space-dragons" but you're wrong. Within the Doctor Who, I could believe in huge space-dragons. What I can't believe is that *our* moon is an egg with a huge space-dragon in it. The reason for this is that we, humans, have landed spacecraft on the moon and we have done lunar seismic experiments (since 1969) and we have put spacecraft in orbit around the moon. Scientists know the internal structure of the moon because they have run the experiments and we know there isn't a huge space-dragon inside it because we could detect that. What I get from this story is that the writer is too ignorant to know this. [I'm using ignorant in the sense of not knowing facts, rather than saying someone is stupid.] Ok, the writer's too ignorant to know that. So, they're probably too ignorant to understand that microbes don't scale up to match the size of the host they attack. An elephant is a million times the mass of a shrew. But a microbe that attacks an elephant is not a million times larger than a microbe that attacks a shrew. Also, a "single-celled" creature cannot be badger-sized - the cell exterior can't support that. And this single-celled creature has articulated legs? Gravity doesn't work the way it they show it in this story. Why does Courtney float around in the moon base? That's not how gravity works. And, how does the yo-yo solve anything other than to tether Courtney briefly from moving more than the length of the cord away from the Doctor. Back to the egg: the mass of an egg+chick decreases over the incubation period. [This isn't a chicken egg but I'm using this as a comparison.] When a creature inside an egg grows, it essentially gets its mass from the existing contents of the egg. So where does this creature get all its additional mass that we are told is now affecting the Earth so badly? Mass doesn't just get created because the creature inside is getting larger. And if it somehow gets the mass from somewhere external, then that would happen really, really slowly - not suddenly so the Earth would be in crisis. At they end of the story, they take a vote with the Earth's populatuion turning off their lights. But what about people on the other side of the Earth - don't they get a vote? Are we to assume that Clara (or the actually the writer) don't care what the people of China or India or New Zealand would think? Are people in Europe the only ones who count? Remember, if it is night in Europe, it is daytime on the other side of the world - so how would turning off their lights indicate a vote anyway? And, finally, how does the creature lay a new egg about the same size as itself? That can't happen physically - this is just stupid. Now, I have often thought that my main problem with this episode (that it our existing moon is an egg - i.e. my first problem all the way at the top of my rant) could be resolved by making it an alien moon. In my proposed story, a new moon (actually an egg) comes along and starts orbiting the Earth and causes tidal issues. That eliminates some of my "bad science" objections because we, humans, haven't done any tests on that new moon so who knows what could be inside it. Or, perhaps, the story could be about visiting a different alien planet with an existing grey moon (that is actually an egg). But all the single-cell microbe, silly local gravity effects, mass of chickens inside eggs - all of that stuff - would still apply if we made it an alien moon. But I might, just, be able to overlook some of that. === END OF RANT === So after that, anything that happens within the program - like some of the nice speeches - just cannot bring up the story rating for me. They filmed at Lanzarote and transformed the colour to a greyscale image to represent the surface of the moon - that was nicely done. And the monster CGI, like the spiders, looks very nice too. The IMDB rating of 6.7. - I knew what the rating was so I could see your reaction to it coming. Actually, if you look at the way the rating scores are distributed in the IMDB poll, it is not one simple curve centred around 6.7. There is a bump of votes scoring it a 10 (Nicole territory), another bump scoring it 7 and another bump at 1 dragging things down. After all my ranting above, it would probably be silly to even mention that they added beeps to the audio when people are speaking over their radios - because that's what moon radios sound like, right? That shows a basic misunderstanding of what the beeps were and what they were for - and where the beeps were heard. I just don't like this story.
Andrew Vignaux
2023-12-06 19:28:25 +0000 UTCThank you for your comment :)
Nicologik
2023-12-04 10:25:51 +0000 UTCThank you for your comment :)
Nicologik
2023-12-04 10:25:37 +0000 UTCThank you for your comment :)
Nicologik
2023-12-04 10:25:23 +0000 UTCBefore getting on to this episode I will say with Danny from the last episode is that he doesn't want Clara lying to him but also that he knows a day will come when the Doctor will push Clara to far and he wants to be there for her when it does and we see that in this episode. After your positive reaction of this story I feel really bad about what I'm about to say. I can understand now why you feel bad when you don't like stories that seem popular. I will say I really do like the visuals of this story and the first half is really creepy. Because of that it does get an extra point out of me as I rate this episode 2/5. That said I rank it one position lower than last weeks episode. 136th/140. That mean's there are only four stories I rank worst than this one. Let's start with the 'spiders' because that's how they are presented at the start with all the cobwebs everywhere. But we learn they're not spiders, they're bacteria. Which doesn't explain why there are cobwebs everywhere because bacteria doesn't spin webs. They are also microscopic organisms so why are they as big as this. It's like the writer said 'oh giant space spiders, that's cool' and then just changed what they were half way through to fit the story. Meaning as creepy as the first part is, none of it makes sense. The moon is an egg. Yes the look on your face when this is revels sums up my feelings exactly. Whenever people are discussing bad episodes of Doctor Who I will always use the sentence, the moon is an egg, to point to this episodes as an example. It's not only that but it's the fact that the space dragon hatches from the egg (which luckily disintegrates into dust) and then immediately lays another egg the same size as the one it just hatched out of in exactly the same spot. And this brings me on to the last point which is there is no consequences to Clara's actions. The vote from Earth is to kill the creature but at the last minute Clara makes the decision not to. And she gets lucky with how it plays out. To end on a positive note the last scene between the Doctor and Clara is fantastic. So well acted.
Jade Ellis
2023-12-04 00:17:26 +0000 UTCI am so glad that you loved this episode because I have had a few arguments online with people who put if forward as an example of series 8's "bad writing". Despite the fact that the writing, especially in this episode, is often so intense and emotional. On being questioned, the people I have interacted with seem to have a problem, not with the writing at all, but with the idea of moon being an egg. Which is certainly a bizarre idea - and one that doesn't bear too much analysis. But it's an idea that was originally intended for a story with Matt's Doctor so hardly an emblem of what is "wrong" with the writing for this Doctor. If we just accept that occasionally Doctor Who will have a slightly mad plot device then the actual dialogue and storytelling of the episode is up there with the best. The scene at the end with the Doctor and Clara is the cherry on the cake for me. It really gave Jenna something to work with and she certainly rose to it. I was quite shocked when this series was running to discover, from the comments below a British newspaper's online reviews, that some people actually hated Clara. Especially when she challenges the Doctor because they seem to feel that his travelling companions should be more docile and not argue with him so much. Personally I enjoy this aspect of their relationship. Especially as it reminds me of the first Doctor and the two school teachers you saw in the first episode of Classic Who. I think that as the first Doctor of a new regeneration cycle, Capaldi's version needs some humanising too. I know they all do but his regeneration more than most. Not that I dislike his grumpiness. We need that for the stories and the character development to work. They IMDB rating is probably made up of some wildly different individual ratings because the story is so divisive. Which sadly means that a sizable contingent must have rated it much lower than 6.7.
Stephen Males
2023-12-02 17:15:54 +0000 UTCWow ! I knew you would be shocked at the IMDB rating. The episode is very divisive, because of that ending I think. Oddly I have only watched this episode once because it upset me to see the doctor and Clara fighting like that. I enjoyed it more watching along with you. You are right about the doctor not being very good on his own. This applies to all of them in new who. If you remember David’s doctor became too big for his boots in Waters of Mars. The companions make him better. Matts doctor was the same in the beast below, and Christopher was fresh from the time war when he met Rose. Will Clara be able to heal Capaldi’s doctor ? Ahh spoilers. I think it was one of the patrons who said that because these are a new set of regenerations, the doctor is more unstable than usual. Anyway great acting as usual from Peter but a real shout out to Jenna Coleman for her performance as Clara.
Jenny Smyth
2023-12-02 16:30:42 +0000 UTC
