This episode of Doctor Who takes Clara and the Doctor to the moon. The moon is growing out of hand, quick literally, and they have to figure out what to do about it! Check out our recap along with thoughts on this week’s episode of Doctor Who titled Kill the Moon!
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Episode Recap of Doctor Who, Season 8 Episode 7: Kill the Moon
Doctor Who this week opens up with Clara and the Doctor arguing about one of her students. The Doctor apparently told her she wasn’t special. Turns out the girl, Courtney, has snuck into the TARDIS, and the girl argues with the Doctor about her not being special. He decides to change her not being special–by making her the first woman on the moon.
They wind up inside a space shuttle, in the year 2049. The space shuttle lands on the moon, and Clara, Courtney and the Doctor prepare for the rough landing. They then meet the meet the people running this space mission, and the Doctor determines that there is a problem with the gravity of the moon. The Doctor seems to think the moon has “put on weight”. The shuttle pilot tells the Doctor the tides have changed., and their solution to the problem is to blow the moon up.
The Doctor and his companions head out for a space walk with their new acquaintances. The “boss” astronaut instructs one of her crew to begin arming the bomb, so she can prepare the final steps to begin the countdown. The astronauts tell the Doctor about the aliens that caused the problem on the moon, and their inability to stop them until now.
The Doctor determines that the moon is coming apart. Meanwhile, the astronaut arming the bombs is attacked by one of the alien creatures. The Doctor and company, meanwhile, hear some scurrying in the dark, and begin to freak out. A spider-like creature approaches, and the Doctor tells everyone to avoid movement, as that is how it finds its prey.
One of the astronauts gets attacked, and is killed. Courtney is attacked as well, but she manages to subdue the bug with a disinfectant. The Doctor determines that the spider-like creature is actually a single cell organism, germ.
Courtney is dropped off at the TARDIS for safety, but the Doctor wants to continue the mission. Clara wants to go home, knowing the moon is still around in the future, but the Doctor says the future for the moon is fuzzy for him, and they must stay to ensure the moon is saved.
The Doctor discovers that the moon is infested with these spider-like germs. The Doctor then heads into the bowels of the moon, where the germs are living.
Clara heads back to the shuttle, and almost falls into a chasm that opened up. The Doctor shows up, and he seems to know the problem. The Doctor determines there is a large being growing. The Doctor says that the moon is a egg, and is hatching. The astronaut boss still wants to kill it to save Earth. The Doctor tells her killing it would solve the problem, but Clara and the Doctor aren’t interested in killing it.
The Doctor decides to sit back and do nothing to stop the astronaut, which Clara protests. He says he can’t make the decision. He tells Clara and the astronaut to determine the best course of action. Courtney returns, and the Doctor leaves in his TARDIS, to let them decide the fate of the moon.
Clara and the astronaut debate the pros and cons of blowing up the moon. The astronaut arms the bomb, but ground control finally makes contact. Clara then makes a broadcast to Earth. She explains the situation, and wants Earthlings to send a message with their lights: lights on for saving the creature, off to kill it.
Earth seems to side with killing it, as the entire Earth goes dark. Clara and Courtney stop the bomb at the last second, and the Doctor returns. He tells them to get in, and they witness the “birth” from Earth. The Earth seems fine without the moon. The Astronaut asks what next, and the Doctor says that human kind advances into space in the mid 21st century. After his rousing speech praising humanities space travels, the moon returns. The creature laid a new egg, apparently.
The Doctor returns Courtney home, but Clara isn’t happy, and demands to know what the Doctor knew about the moon situation. She isn’t happy she was left with this difficult decision. She begins crying, and feels the Doctor made her feel like an idiot. She leaves, and tells the Doctor to not come back.
She talks with Danny, telling him the story. He tells her to calm down and think about her decision to be sure she is really done with the Doctor. She heads home, and takes a look at the moon.
Josh’s Thoughts: Doctor Who, Season 8 Episode 7: Kill the Moon
Well on the surface, this episode is pretty cheesy. It is a pretty zany “theory” to call the moon an egg for a creature that has been incubating since the dawn of humanity, at the very minimum. Despite this cheesy premise, the episode was pretty interesting.
The Doctor certainly is a much more “abrasive” version of himself this time. He rubbed Clara the wrong way pretty badly. I am not sure what the point of him leaving Clara to the decision of the fate of the moon. Why would he not provide assistance with the decision? I think Clara was pretty spot on with her thoughts–the three left with the decision were definitely not the most well-equipped to make this decision.
From a story perspective, it certainly is interesting though. Many times the companions of Doctor Who are just along for the ride, not making any significant decisions. This time, the decision was square in Clara’s lap, albeit having to battle an astronaut to make it.
But the more Clara is around this Doctor, the more she seems to get tired of him. I am sure Stephen Moffat is preparing to exit Clara from the show. I am wondering if it is going to be on bad terms or not. It would probably be the first time this has happened–at least since it restarted with Eccelston.
It looks like nothing new for “Paradise” though, as we didn’t see the creepy man or woman greeting people this time. I guess we will hopefully see this continue next episode.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 8 Episode 7 of Doctor Who: Kill the Moon
This episode of Doctor Who was just kinda “meh” to me. Mainly because of all the logistics of it that didn’t really make sense. Ok, sure, we haven’t really been going to the moon lately, so I suppose it could be possible that Courtney would be the first woman on the moon. But 2049 isn’t all that far away, only 35 years. And we are to believe that within that time period, two nations that have had nothing to do with the space race, and neither of which currently (maybe never?) has a space program (that I’ve ever heard of, anyway), would in one case have an established moon base (Mexico), and in the other case are the ones who are sent to be humanity’s savior (Great Britain)? I found that a little hard to believe. I know it sounds like I’m being an ethnocentric American, but I’m not necessarily saying that the USA should have been one of the countries, I’m just saying that they should have used two countries that were more credible. So that was one thing that took me out of the episode a bit.
Also, it was plainly obvious that Clara wanted to choose to allow the creature to live, so it’s quite convenient that she would choose to put it to a vote which benefited her side, as to vote against her was the vote that would actually require action, whereas to vote for her side, no action was required. Who’s to say that the entire world is even paying attention to her broadcast, or that it’s even possible for everyone in the world to see it? What’s more, who even has the power to turn off the big lights? Sure, people at home can turn off their own lights, but what about stores, businesses, street lights? There just wouldn’t be enough time for people in charge of such things to turn all those things off. Not to mention that where the moon was in orbit, they would only be able to see how half of the world had voted. Plus, it would be the middle of the night for half of the world, and they would be asleep, so most of their lights would already be off anyway.
I’m also not clear on why the vote really mattered either way. If they use the bombs to kill the moon creature, then the moon blows up, and its remains hurtle toward Earth. If they allow the egg to hatch, then, as they believed at the time, parts of the moon hurtle toward Earth. The only difference was that a huge unknown creature would come out of the moon. How do they know it would even go toward Earth? The universe is quite vast, it’s quite possible it may fly a different way (as it did). Even if it did fly toward the Earth, they could have the military from various nations set up to then kill it, if it became hostile and started destroying things. It also appeared that if they allowed the bombs to go off, that would kill not only the creature, but themselves. So yeah, logically someone would want to save their own skin by stopping the bombs from going off, if they knew they had a way off of the moon (the TARDIS) when the moon creature hatched.
Of course, one would argue that Clara didn’t know that the Doctor was going to come back. Well, let’s go back to the first episode this season, when the recently regenerated Doctor ran off and left Clara, leaving the audience wondering if he was going to come back for her. Throughout the whole ordeal, Clara had faith that he would have her back, and he did. Just like here, he did come back for her. Yeah yeah, she got stuck making a tough decision, but in reality, stopping the bomb at the last second was the only choice she could make for her own survival anyway. And what’s wrong with the Doctor allowing the humans to make their own decisions about humanity? Why should the Doctor be the one to make the decision?
Then Clara gets all mad at the Doctor for withholding information from her. Um, that’s a little hypocritical. In the episode Listen, Clara withheld information from the Doctor about why they went to a different timeline than her own, and doesn’t tell him anything about Danny, or the fact that Rupert is the child version of her boyfriend Danny, or that Orson looks exactly like her boyfriend Danny. The Doctor keeps wondering why they keep being brought to weird places, and Clara could have easily explained what was going on, but she didn’t.
However, I will say, the argument scene that Clara had with the Doctor this episodewas a great performance by Jenna Coleman, so props to her.
Okay, I’ve already written way too much, so I’ll start to shut up now. I wonder how long Clara will stay away. Will she be back this episode, or still gone? I also hope that we get some more “Promised Land”/Missy stuff this episode, as it was absent last episode.
Scenes from Doctor Who, Season 8 Episode 8: Mummy on the Orient Express
Here are scenes from the next episode of Doctor Who, titled Mummy on the Orient Express:
Not sure I like the new doc…but I didn’t like matt Smith in the beginning either…
I’m really enjoying this season so far and this is by far my favorite episode. Took me a while to get used to a new Doctor but when doesn’t it? We always get attached to the previous one.
I kind of enjoyed this episode but, after seeing many specials/programs on why we have a moon and it’s importance, I was surprised that another solution couldn’t be found to rid the moon of the “germs”