The Time Lord 1.7 - Lunar Lunacy

Episode: Kill the Moon
Song: We Are (Responsible) by Ana Johnson

34 years in the future, Clara and Courtney have been dumped on the moon with a terrible decision.
Nigel: Ooh, Doctor-lite episode. Fancy that.
Andrew: Blimey, Capaldi's only been the Doctor for six episodes and he's taking an episode off? Even Hartnell managed better than than that! Fifteen if I recall rightly...
Dave: So the Doctor's really ditched Clara for good, has he? Well, it's not as if there haven't been the warning signs - like, say, him repeatingly abandoning her to die every episode we've seen him in!
Nigel: And a terrible decision is "all future of mankind" against "an innocent life"? Call me species-centric but I say fuck the innocent life. If there's no third option, g'bye innocent life. It's like doctors when they decide not to operate on people who won't survive - life's a bitch, tough.
Andrew: Given the Doctor can't be arsed to take part, is it really that important?

Clara says they only have 45 minutes to decide.
N: (yawns) No rush, then.
A: But this episode only goes for 44:31, including credits. This better not be another real-time episode.
D: Yeah, this definitely another of those pre-credit sequences they should have cut. "Ooh, there's a horrible moral dilemma but we can't tell you what it is, only the Doctor wasn't interested in taking part." I mean, how many people will just go "Fine, Clara, good luck with that, see you next time."
N: Ooh, cunning acryonym.
A: SYNT? How is that cunning?
N: Never mind.

The title gives a subtle clue as to the moral dillema.
D: "Kill the moon". Is that a moral dilemma? Does the moon have space cancer and want euthenasia?
A: Yeah, kill the moon. Gets Lance Parkin and John Preddle out of bed to make sense of it all.
N: Frankly, I bet the Silurians are kicking themselves for not thinking of that earlier...

Clara has dragged the Doctor back to Coal Hill to deal with Courtney.
N: Sweet onion chutney! That shirt! Did Mel choose it? Why did Clara let him out dressed in those polka-dots? He looks like a reject from Man to Man With Dean Learner!
A: "What is a Courtney Woods?" Christ, remember when the Doctor wasn't retarded? OK, he doesn't remember her, but obviously Clara's talking about a student!
N: Maybe the Doctor's been brain-damaged. It would explain that shirt.
D: You know, this Coal Hill really does look like the one from Remembrance. I like that.

Turns out the Doctor's casual speciesism has turned the black schoolgirl into a shoplifting alcoholic crackhole underage prostitute. The Doctor is, quite understandably, skeptical.
N: Wait? So Courtney "Notoriously Disruptive Influence" Woods is now blaming the Doctor for her behavior because he didn't say she was special? Bullshit! Where's Mr. Gormsby when you need him to deal with this wishy-washy-touchy-feely-warm-flannel-to-wipe-my-arse-nonsense? I'm with the Doctor. Rubbish!
D: We didn't even see this bit. So is Courtney lying? Did the Doctor actually grab her and scream "You're not special you darkie peasant, get off my island?" Or was it a casual slip of the tongue?
A: And, let me get this straight. Courtney EXPECTED the Doctor to tell her she was special. Why? All she did was projectile vomit on the control room floor! Was he supposed to be amazed at her Donna-like awesomeness because of that? I mean, not only didn't we see this scene, all the interpretations show that Courtney is whining, blame-shifting attention whore!

Clara nonetheless is staging an intervention.
D: Hrm. Courtney's had a haircut and looks very calm and organized given she's supposed to be a kind of Linda Blair psycho from glee at the moment.
A: Has Clara promised Courtney another trip in the TARDIS? I'll give points to the girl for trying to make up for aforementioned vomiting, but she doesn't seem upset at the Doctor at all.
N: Maybe it's not Courtney who's blaming the Doctor for all this, but Clara? It'd make sense for her to find an excuse then bully the Doctor into fixing it for her.
A: What a synt.

Courtney is upset at what an arse the Doctor is to her.
D: Can't blame her.
N: Can we? I mean, did he really say she was "nothing"? We didn't see any of this, and the Doctor can't remember it. There's no fair way to judge this.
A: To his credit, the Doctor clearly respects Courtney enough not to lie to her and just automatically say she's special. And he is willing to make her special instead of buzzwords.
D: "First woman on the moon"? Have there been no female astronauts? I mean, seriously? This is a real-life thing, not the "not sure if we landed on Mars in the 1970s" thing?

The TARDIS is en route to the moon.
D: I love that you can see through the windows of the police box. Very detailed.
N: There is that idea if you look through the windows, you just see the inside of a police box, they've been doing that since 2005.
A: Hang on, why is the Doctor using more Sanctuary 6 Base spacesuits? OK, it's clear now he can churn out copies of them but... why? Is there really no better spacesuits in the whole universe than the easily-breakable 42nd century Torchwood orange? And why are the helmets so dirty if they're brand new?

Our heroes are on a space shuttle. Which is second-hand, full of nuclear bombs and has no brakes.

N: "Judging by the Bennet Oscillator..." Oh, fuck off! So there's this gizmo built in 2049 and isn't touched for the next nine hundred years? Give me strength.
A: Yeah, they said "Hinchcliffe the shit out of it!" not "randomly quote Ark in Space". What is this? A DWAD?
D: Look at it crash on the moon. Not half as interesting a sight as Scorpio on Gauda Prime, is it?

The crew of the shuttle aren't pleased to meet the intruders.
A: Wow, seriously, if they didn't cast Hermione Norris to play a sarcastic disillusioned astronaut in Doctor Who then the casting director should have been shot. This is as perfect a fit as Briggsy doing monster voices.
D: Oh, and the Doctor's suggesting they shoot Courtney and Clara first because he will keep regenerating forever. It's obviously a bluff, but they're going deliberately out of their way to make him horrible.
A: The Doctor wouldn't keep regenerating, he'd just flatten them with energy like River Song did.
N: And he doesn't have infinite regenerations - he's got eleven left, he already used his first...
D: I really don't get the point of this scene. The Doctor impresses no one. Courtney sits there, bored shitless at his antics. Clara is embarrassed. And the astonauts are obviously wondering what meds the Doctor has been mixing in his incredibly unfunny gravity checks.
A: More DWAD-isms, copying Tom Baker without understanding him.
N: And they're doing the yo-yo gag now. For fuck's sake...

Gravity on the moon has gone wierd. The tides are high and shit's going down.
N: Ah, could this be why they build the gravitron in 31 years time?

A: I wish the Doctor would just shut up. He's got all the dialogue in this scene, so we don't actually get to know what the other characters are thinking. It's just a lot of eye-rolling as they wait for Capaldi to finish his dialogue. And if he just keeps deducing everything, what's the point in telling the story.
D: Thank god Roz from Spooks threatens to blow him up. Mind you, it's not like alien life has actually made a good impression on mankind. The Doctor's certainly unable to charm her or the audience.

Our heroes disembark.
N: That's not an airlock! It a door in the wall of the room everyone was in! Do they think a space shuttle is just a QANTAS plane or something?
A: It's pretty knackered either way. It's good for Roz there was a Time Lord passing or she and her mute mates would be on a suicide mission with no way to get back to Earth.
D: Maybe they were. We might know that but CAPALDI WON'T SHUT THE HELL UP!

N: "One small thing for a thing." Oh, seriously. Everyone needs a slap for that. What a steaming pile of crap.
A: Yes, I was quite clever back in 2010 but after five years it's like there's a glitch in the script software with random words replaced with "thing".
D: The girl playing Courtney isn't to blame. That line is almost as bad as the "She's my mother" from The Idiot's Lantern. No actor could pull that off properly.
A: It was nice of Roz to let Courtney out first. That discussion would have been interesting to see, in fact, more interesting than this scene. And did they go on location for this? It looks as CGI as Smith & Jones, only that was a prettier version of the moon...
N: It's a quarry. And not a particularly good one, when all is said and done.

Our heroes head for a Mexican mining colony on the moon covered in cobwebs, which went silent the exact moment all the gravity crap started happening.
A: Well, it's covered in cobwebs. This is probably a clue as to what happened. Surely everyone should be braced for an attack by giant spiders?
N: Dear god, Roz's pals are morons. I mean, could they really not find a better astronaut? Did they not discuss this plan at the time?
D: He's obviously only there as a redshirt. It's like they went "well, he's not going to play any real part in the plot so why the hell even make him a believable character".
A: Moff was obviously the one to lampshade it with the "third-hand astronauts" gag but seriously, Lano and Woodley would be better assistants than this!
D: The writer is getting worse and worse - first the retarded prequel, then an argument we never saw, the worst exposition scene Shaun McCallif's Bad Crime, and now this. I mean, a lunar colony is wiped out and the world is decimated by tidal waves BUT IT TAKES TEN LONG FUCKING YEARS BEFORE ANYONE DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT?
A: So the Mexicans were doing a privatized mineral survey of the moon. So logically there was the idea the moon would going to be mined for minerals. Ergo, there should at least have been some industry making space ships to transfer the ore. The idea that the Mexicans had the last working spaceship on Earth and then left it on the moon is beyond retarded.
N: It would have made more sense if Roz said the Earth had been attacked by aliens or something, wiping out all their space technology. It would explain her anti-alienisms, the delay in getting to the moon, the lack of resources. But no, apparently no one in the entire human race could be fucked to do anything until the next financial decade.
A: At least in Seeds of Death there was a reason why they abandoned space travel - they had something else. This is just horrendously-plotted. Remember, in exactly 10 years time is The Waters of Mars. So the idea that in less than eight years we go from a near-destroyed Earth to a global space expansion program... no. This is just crap. You can only forgive continuity gaffs if the stories are good.
D: And why are the spiders spinning webs? In no atmosphere? What prey are they expecting to catch? I bet it doesn't turn out to be cobweb-like space fungus like in Blake's 7. Coz that would make sense.

Turns out that the Mexicans have been webbed up and eaten. Quelle surprise.
A: It's horrific, but not surprising. I mean, you find an abandoned base covered with giant cobwebs where the crew perished screaming a decade ago? It'd be more surprising if they hadn't been webbed up.
D: I'm reminded of The Mist. Or, to be completely accurate, I'd rather watch that than this.
A: What else do these spiders eat? Surely they'll have starved after ten years or moved on?
N: Seeing red-shirts in darkened corridors no doubt about to be eaten at any moment doesn't work. We don't know their names, only that they are criminally and subversively stupid. If the base had been attacked an hour ago, it would feel more immediate and dangerous. If these people had names... I mean, what is Roz's character called? She hasn't said. She doesn't have a nametag. Nothing.
A: Oh my god. Look! There's a poncho over the chair. Because Mexican astronauts wear ponchos!
D: FUCK OFF! What next? Sombreros built into their space helmets?
A: Well, there's a trashcan lid welded to the wall.
D: This is shit. I mean, this isn't Doctor Who I don't like, this is incredibly subpar on all levels. This is without doubt the dumbest and most idiotic story since Night Terrors...

The Doctor reveals there are no minerals on the moon.
A: So how come Niel Armstrong brought back silicia, alumina, magnesium and iron, smart arse?
N: Give him his due, he looks more like the Doctor in a spacesuit than that polkadot abomination.
D: If you want to do a story about spider monsters on the moon, why not rip off Apollo 18? That's arguably the most Hinchcliffian approach. You have hunted astronauts, moving rocks that turn into giant spiders, dead cosmonauts and abandoned bases... and it really is so much better than any of this.

The Doctor reveals the moon is also breaking apart.
D: Oh, how convenient that the tremors wait for his over-long poetic speech to start.
N: No one noticed the huge cracks forming on the moon? Even after the moon's gravity went crazy, no one bothered to look through a telescope?

That redshirt astronaut is eaten by a giant spider. What a shock.
N: Roz didn't bother to send a message saying "FYI, there are giant spiders on the moon"? Didn't he know that the Mexicans had been killed there? Why hadn't he got back to the shuttle?
D: And how did he hear the spider in the cave? There's no air on the moon!
N: And even if he could hear it, why did he think "Ooh, I think I'll explore that cave now I'm out of contact with the rest of the group and the whole freaking satellite's shaking apart"?
A: And despite knowing the moon is falling apart and there are giant spiders everywhere, the others stay in the Mexican base in the dark and make no effort to contact him. Even if the Doctor's fascinated in the mystery, the smartest thing would be to return to the TARDIS and do a scan...
D: I'll give Moffat this - no script-editor could fix this many problems in a plot. It's beyond saving. The Twin Dilemma was more credible and coherent than this... god damn...

Spiders also threaten the main speaking parts.
D: "Was that you?" "I don't sound like that!" Yeah, pal, that's the kind of quick thinking you get in astronaut school. Don't worry you're on your own on a disintegrating moon with local predators...
N: Are they really expecting the monsters not to be spiders?
A: How have the spiders survived with no food, no air and ever-increasing gravity that should have crushed their spindly little bodies ages ago? And how do they sense movement if they're blind and deaf and aren't normally in an atmosphere to carry vibrations? This is ARSE, people!
D: The spiders are scary, but they're not clever. They could be the space bunnies from The Goodies for all it matters to the plot. Yes, anything that might kill you scuttling in the dark is scary but you can shine a torch on it and see it for the bizarre glow-in-the-dark rubber thing it is...
A: Oh, and now the Doctor does the "when I say run" catchphrase despite the fact he's been telling everyone to move as slowly as possible. Idiots! And Roz picks now to complain at the Doctor's take-charge attitude instead of any moment prior... It's like this was a round robin written out of order and no one was really talking to each other.
N: It's Trial of a Time Lord on acid!

Spiders and shit.
A: So these spiders, who can live without meat for a decade at a time and spin webs around space suits... now jump on people's faces and eat them. Scary, but the logic has long since abandoned.
N: Style over substance, zero plot. This is the new Tenth Planet.
D: "Quick, it's shutting!" Yeah, thanks for that Clara. Never have spotted it - and she leaves Courtney behind. What a dutiful and mature adult she is...
N: So the gravity comes back on? Ergo, all that bollocks with the window was a waste of time!
A: Those human jaws in the spider are nasty-looking but actually ridiculously harmless when you think about it. And how lucky that these spiders are actually giant spider-shaped bacteria with lungs and a hard shell that instantly dissolve with one puff of disinfectant.
N: I'm getting a headache from how stupid this is. It's a servicable fight the monster scene, and it'd look awesome out of context for chat shows and the like but dear god...
D: Wow, Roz gives a big speech about how Tony Osaba's character had a life and a family and they had a shared history... but we still don't know what he was called. Or what she is called. And none of the other characters give a crap, because Capaldi is doing exposition again.
A: Atrocious. Absolutely at-ro-shous.

Courtney wants out. Can't blame her.
A: What is the point of the Doctor shooting his mouth of like this? He thinks Courtney's 35? He doesn't realize she's in danger? Yet at the same time is taking her back to the TARDIS? This is stupid!
D: Yeah, this was the scene where they should having been discussing germs and moonquakes.
N: And now Roz tries to find redshirt 1. Who is called Henry and has presumably been gone for hours.

The Doctor wonders if the moon will be destroyed now, in an un-fixed point of time.
N: Is that why everything in this story is so retarded? It's a blink in the time space continuum?
D: Well, that's a convincing argument to say the moon isn't destined to survive. All the stories saying the moon existed just featured a hologram. Those moonbases and penal colonies and the Threshold complex, all of them were on a painting.
A: And none of them mentioned the fact the moon exploded that time.
D: Who cares if the moon explodes when it has no effect on any other story?

Some more spiders and stuff.
N: There's nothing to say, is there? This is just a runaround. All the expendable characters are gone, so no one's going to be eaten now. And they had spider-repellent. There's just padding.
A: Nineteen minutes in. God, what a slog.
D: Apollo 18. All I'm saying.
A: "It's a vacuum, it won't work!" she says as the bloody spray works nonetheless. Shouldn't this have occured to them during the very long trip through the lunar landscape.
N: Just empty the contents out of the bottle on its back...
A: And what precisely are these spiders feeding on? Or evolving into? This is arse.
D: Yeah, Doc, dive into a lake of amniotic fluid at the bottom of a vast chasm with useless spider-repellent. That'll help explain everything.
A: Why is Roz saying tumblr was used by her grandma? I mean, it's only 35 years ago. Roz looks old enough to have used it as a kid. Unless the joke was that her grandma was trying to be all hip and cool and funky...
N: Screw that, how is Courtney able to use her mobile in the wrong timezone? Like Capaldi would bother to zap her mobile.
D: These quakes are just shudders on the camera. None of the rocks move! This is arse!
A: Just how far was Henry off course if it's taken them this long to find his corpse?
N: And why is Roz shocked he's dead after she just announced she lost both her crew?
D: "It looks so different..." Yes, Clara, there's a whacking great canyon in front of you now! Christ...

And the moon is falling apart. Still.
A: Very epic shot, the shuttle tumbling into the chasm.
D: And the rocks are moving now, at least.
N: Pity it's followed by the Doctor doing that ninja thing again. Did he just teleport at will?
A: And who fixed all the lights, cleaned up all the cobwebs in the Mexican base?
N: Hang on... did... Clara just said she gave a packet of tampons to the school secretary as a Christmas present! What the fuck?! Even Capaldi's jaw drops at that.
D: I... yeah. Thanks for sharing that, Clara. I think we now know why you don't get on with people past puberty. Does she think women menstruate once a year? I... no...

The Doctor reveals that the moon is in fact an egg.
D: He sounds just like Roger the Alien.
N: He sounds like he's having a hysterical fit of giggles.
D: I think the egg idea is probably the most believable thing in this episode.
A: Indeed. Though that is because someone else did the idea first...

 

 

D: Yes, that's Jack Williamson's Born of the Sun, written exactly 80 years before Kill the Moon. Proving once again that random Australian tweens are better-read than the cream of BBC Wales writing staff.
A: Whoa, was that a Mad Larry moment?
N: And now Courtney is discussing space chicken birth canals. This is very gynaecological all of a sudden...

Oh yeah. That terrible decision. How do they kill it?
D: Oooh. Very deliberate mood whiplash there. Roz really puts some hatred into that.
A: Even so, she's not gripped by mad xenophobia. She wants to stop the moon exploding. It is literally nothing personal. And while the Doctor's reaction is full of righteousness all he can do is basically say "Yes, you will live but you'll feel bad about it."
N: And no one on Earth knows the egg thing so there won't be any awkward explanations anyway.
A: All the arguments on saving the creature basically come down to squeamishness. None of them can justify it beyond "killing babies is bad".
N: And it's not some kind of abortion debate... mind you, given how badly this story is written, are we comparing this to abortion? I mean, it's more like running into a delivery room with a machine gun and firing it into the stomach of the mother before she gives birth. Not exactly the same thing.

The Doctor refuses to choose.
N: He's really quite reasonable. It's not his decision to make and we all know the shit he got into the last time he tampered with a fixed point in space exploration.
D: Until he ignores Clara's request for help. That is where he crosses the line.
A: Yet I feel like he's got a point. Clara's been trying to control everything with him and Danny and even Rusty. She wants to be in charge, she gets the responsibility.
N: It sounds like he's sick of her telling him what to do and what's right or wrong.
A: Understandable, but he is pretty much throwing aside their friendship to prove a point.

In fact, the Doctor buggers off to leave them to choose.
D: And he abandons Clara. Again. I think she's finally noticed.
A: Is he coming back? I mean, with any other Doctor you know he'd choose to, but we've had our faith deliberately and systematically undermined. He's effectively leaving them to die, whatever they choose.
N: OK, Roz calling him a prat and the millions of spiders on the disintegrating moon. I bet those ten seconds are what were used to convince them to make this episode. Brilliant.
A: More Moonbase-nicks, with the neatly-plugged air breach.

And so the debate begins.
A: The Doctor is wrong in this, I'm calling it. He's told them what will happen if they kill the egg, but not what will happen if they don't. You can't choose fairly with no information.
D: Roz is right. All they know tells them it's either letting Earth be destroyed or the creature.
N: "The moon is made of eggshell". Clara, get real! Even chicken-eggshell that thick would be extinction level! I don't know if that's very good writing or very bad, but JLC's panic almost carries it off.
A: Roz has another point - there is no guarantee the hatched creature won't attack the world that's already been ravaged by its birth. And even without the eggshell, Earth's been wrecked by ten years of tidal waves.
D: So all we've got in the creature's favor is blind faith. There's not a shred of evidence suggesting Roz isn't wrong that the only way to save Earth and humanity, not to mention the future, is to nuke the egg.

Clara decides to make Earth vote.
Clara's definitely not got anything on the "let it live" option, does she?
If the world doesn't end, Clara's going to be the equivalent of Max Headroom in 2050. Everywhere she goes, she'll be seen as part of the youtube stunt of the millennium.
How come Ground Control knew to contact the Mexican base? And why are the monitors showing the bomb countdown?
And why does Clara assume the people will vote at all? The governments will just shut down all the power grids to make damn well sure she hits the nuke!
In fact, the fact the base will last 45 minutes seems very optimistic with all these explosions.
What would you choose?
On this evidence? Nuke it.
Nuke it. Remember parasite wasps lay eggs.
Nuke it. Remember that Genesys song, The Day The Light Went Out?

Earth votes: nuke it. Clara decides to ignore the vote.
N: Well, that shows due respect to the democratic process, doesn't it, boys and girls?
D: When every single light on Earth was switched off. The human race unified. How depressing.
A: I'm not entirely sure... but why can't Roz reactivate the countdown anyway?

Kill the Moon in four panels.

The Doctor returns and takes the others to a beach to watch the moon explode.
N: And you'll be hearing from Jack Williamson's lawyers, Monsieur Harness...
D: The whole "sound doesn't carry in vacuum" concept really hasn't sunk in, has it?
A: The Doctor says "no one" was going to die. What about all the poor bacteria spiders? They're not evil, they deserve life as much as anyone else.
N: More important, that means the Doctor knew the hatching egg isn't a threat. Everyone accuses him of it and he just looks smug. Kind of like an apathetic Seventh Doctor, really.
D: Wow, the way he stood on the beach I half expected him to start regenerating. Or is that wishful thinking on my part?

It turns out this is what inspires humanity to take up space travel.
N: Until they discover T-Mat?
D: Pretty sure the moon was there in The Waters of Mars 8 years later. Is there a holo-moon?
A: Hah. Hollow-moon.
N: Shut up.
D: I noticed the Doctor says manking will "endure". It won't thrive or flourish, it will endure. Like we endure torture. Or endure this rubbish episode.
A: The Doctor sure sounds upset for all his happy speechifying.

But wait - the space dragon immediately lays another moon to replace the old one.
N: Oh, come on. That is contrived, even if we assume some wierd space-wobbliness allows a newborn chick to give birth to something bigger than it's entire body.
A: Won't everyone on Earth just assume this is a huge publicity stunt, ala Max Hedroom?
D: Or, given they know the moon is an egg, won't they start mining amniotic fluid and sell the bacteria spider as guide dogs to pets.
N: The Doctor says humanity is inspired by the moment it showed mercy. When it didn't. As far as anyone knows, the bomb set off the hatching...
A: And while Roz is clearly grateful for Clara saving the day, there's no ignoring the fact she deliberately risked destroying all life on Earth because she didn't want the guilt.

Time to go their separate ways.
N: Oh for shit's sake! Roz deserves a lift to NASA at least! Don't dump her on a beach in the middle of nowhere with no way of communicating with civilization...
A: Actually, shouldn't it be night? The moon was facing Earth's dark side when the hatching started.
D: Beautiful acting from JLC. She looks really hurt, like she knew she did the wrong thing.
A: That's the trouble with control freaks, they can't stand not being in control. The Doctor gave her a huge responsibility and it was only by a fluke she made the right choice and she knows it. Plus also repeatedly getting Courtney killed and finding out no human agrees with her pro-life stance.
D: But it's not pro-life. After three months, it is universally considered murder if you try and end the baby's life. The giant pregnant space dragon was well and truly at term. This bizarre metaphor is pointless.
A: Hang on, didn't we do all this moral bollocks with the Star Whale in The Beast Below?
N: Ah yes, Moffat's most embarrassing episode. And then he commissioned this.
D: We never knew when we were well-off.

Courtney is returned to school and the Doctor spoilaz like crazy.
A: So the female American president Roz mentioned was Courtney. So they SHOULD have asked her opinion after all.
D: But Courtney's not American. Or into politics - unless you consider ignoring the electorate.
N: And if she marries Blinovitch, won't her husband perish in a horrible Benjamin-Button-style time crash?
A: Won't Courtney just cancel the NASA mission when she's in power, telling everyone it'll all be cool, so none of this story will ever happen?
D: ...good on you, Courtney.

Clara, however, is spitting blood.
N: She threatened to smack the Doctor so hard he'd regenerate. Flip that round, and the Doctor threatens to punch Clara so much she will die as a result. Not so endearing now, is it?
A: They say all paranoia starts with arrogance. Clara's convinced the Doctor is playing mind games with her. Is she thinking he's out for revenge for all the lies she told him?
D: Or has she finally cracked from repeatedly being abandoned and left to die, constantly being insulted and talked down to, and the Doctor actively trying to ruin her childhood heros? Justified or not, it was obvious these two were going to self-destruct when she lies and bullies him and he treats her like crap in return. If Donna was around, she would have got through all this in the first episode...
N: "Shut up! I am so sick of listening to you!" Oh, Clara, you speak for us!
A: Clara is right. She's never deliberately tried to make Danny and the Doctor feel scared, helpless and betrayed while the Doctor is quite willing to do that to the one person he's supposed to care about.

Clara tells the Doctor to fuck off back to the moral highground.
D: Good. We've had to put up with seven bloody episodes of the Doctor treating mankind as something he trod in by accident, constantly insulting everyone and acting like a god when he just makes more mistakes that get innocent people killed.
A: Yup. It's clear it's not his motives but his methods that are the problem. He wanted mankind to make its own decisions, but he had nothing but contempt for all concerned and refused to help even when specificially asked. If he's more interested in looking clever and making mankind come to him, well screw him.
N: Just like last week, Clara is shown to be Barbara - the woman that pulls him off his pedestal.
A: Except Miss Wright had way less baggage than Clara who is going out with the one person at Coal Hill even more traumatized than she is.
D: Except when Barbara told the Doctor off, he listened in the same story. Even if Capaldi has realized what he's done, he's not lifting a finger to make amends or even defend himself. He doesn't even say sorry for upsetting the girl he begged not to abandon him.
N: Yeah, but back then she didn't know him. She's making a very informed choice.
A: Ironically, totally different from the main story.
D: There should be a bit more resonance. Courtney got upset by the Doctor saying she wasn't special and now Clara's upset because the Doctor says she is special. She was dragging the Doctor to fix a problem and now she never wants to see him again.
A: Fair enough. He asked her to help him through his regeneration and then he abandoned her. He asks her if he's a good man and ignores her answer. She says she has a hero and he tries to prove they don't exist. She tries to convince him to be open-minded and he refuses. She asks for help and he says no.
N: The straw that crippled the dromedary has landed, people.

It doesn't take a genius to see Clara's broken. Ergo, Danny sees Clara's broken.
D: Good for Danny. He's not even remotely saying "I told you so." He's sad that Clara's lost her friend.
A: And he doesn't judge the Doctor's actions on the grounds he doesn't know enough. That's the most logical course of action in this entire demented episode.
N: And he's right - people say shit in the heat of emotion. It's not fair on either her or the Doctor if she storms off. Look what happened to Ace. They won't be able to move on if there's a suggestion Clara might not have meant it. I bet you anything Moff wrote this episode.

Clara goes home, gets ratted on red wine and looks at the moon in the sky.
D: You never see it that big in real life.
N: Clara's hitting the bottle. It makes her much more human. I'd need a drink after an episode like that.
A: Of course, knowing that in 24 years a decade-long disaster will engulf the Earth and there's nothing she can do about it is a bit depressing.
D: Yeah. It's a very depressing episode. Again. Why should we keep watching?
N: Well, if this Peter Harness bloke is writing next week's, I'm not sure I have an answer.

2/5

N: See, the whole "moon is an egg" thing was fine. It was absolutely everything else.
A: There was some witty dialogue, but it doesn't cover what a totally retarded plot it was. You can't have a moral dilemma with only one side of an argument and there's no logic behind mankind waiting ten years to do something about the moon.
D: Courtney deserved a better episode in the limelight. They made her an inconsistent, barely-coherent loser who would sing-song insult Clara in the middle of the moon exploding. It's a testament to her charisma, really that she was likeable when Angie and Artie couldn't die fast enough.
N: And what the hell was Roz's name? It was like the writer just shoved all the exposition to plot to Capaldi and Miss Norris could barely get a word in edgeways.
D: The central concept was OK and the final confrontation was good, but this is a terrible episode.
N: I reckon it's the polkadot shirt. It's cursed.
A: Makes more sense than the bacteria spiders, that's fer sure.