Kill the Moon

[Anonymous @]

@serahni the more you say “there are inaccuracies and holes”, the more I wonder about these episodes. Yesterday, on the Caretaker thread (or possibly elsewhere due to morphine injections and pain, blah!) I speculated about the possibility of everything occurring in some other ‘place’.

Not a netherspere (that’s covered:) ) but we seem to have clock towers in the TimeotD and Clara’s comment about ‘being born under one’ together with clocks and wheels in the opening sequence.

I wondered about hypnosis -small watches leading to bigger clock towers and the issues of “Sherwood being too green and too right” as if we were in a story in a story.

@oblique hit it squarely on the head when she pointed out Coal-Hill’s sign so freshly painted and colourful – forgive me, Oblique, for paraphrasing,  but the school looked a bit like a props department -maybe unfinished for a reason….it’s not real?

As for the Botox ClitzerWivver -sorry, I keep forgetting the damn monster’s name so I’m making ’em up – others have said it seemed a bit ‘junky’. Then there’s the Doctor’s choice of T-shirt, Danny being ‘unrecognisable’ to the Doctor as Orson ….so who knows? “Who Nose?” Sorry about repeating myself but there are very many ways to interpret these stories at the mo

Kindest, puro.

 

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@dickiebow I liked this episode a lot because I feel like it built up tension in the beginning and the doctor’s little monologue about humanity spreading across the universe at the end was Peter’s first really great doctor moment for me.

I wanted to like this episode, because it had interesting things to say about the dynamic between the main characters, and the changes that the Doctor has undergone recently.

Where it fell flat for me, and this is something that Who does on occasion, is that for some reason it abandoned any pretence of scientific knowledge, and replaced it with “fantastical scientism” (I don’t know if this is a real term, or if I’ve just pulled it out of my, ahem, subconscious).

What I mean by “fantastical scientism” is the use of sciencey sounding terms and concepts, and using them to handwave plot points in a lazy way.

(The other main offender in AG Who was The End of Time, which had interesting character moments, but ludicrous action scenes).

It’s not just that the fantastical scientism sounds so wrong, it is that in this episode there was no need for the mistakes. The parasitic spider beasties didn’t have to be “single-celled prokaryotes”, they could simply have been described as parasites of the space egg (is Moon Dragon the official name?)

Use of the Space shuttle made no sense, especially for a one-way suicide mission. A Saturn V rocket would have been more sensible, and perhaps more iconic. (Still would not have had the payload capacity, though!)

The anomalous mass gain could have been explained with established Who fantastical mechanisms, such as the creature originating in E-space, and simply needing to incubate in our universe. Instead, the mass gain was used to explain the production problem of not being able to simulate lunar gravity, but not given a sensible in-Whoniverse explanation.

I was looking forward to this episode all week, so I’m feeling pretty raw that it was so unclever, because Who can often be clever without sacrificing its emotional impact.

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@purofilion I speculated about the possibility of everything occurring in some other ‘place’.

Perhaps the Doctor was taken into the Matrix on Gallifrey at the end of The Time of the Doctor instead of being actually given a new set of regenerations, and this entire season is like a set of virtual Tasks of Hercules to see whether he deserves to actually be set loose back in the universe again, and Missy is managing the simulations, as if they were in a viseogmae, but just debriefing the pawns (hence the chess motif) after the Doctor has beaten each level.

Sounds bonkers, though.

[Whoville @whoville]

I loved it. I got a strong Childhood’s End vibe from it. All these years the Doctor has been playing the Overlord, guiding and protecting humanity. But there comes a time when you just have stand back and let them take that one giant leap of evolution on their own. I think the Doctor, like the Overlords, has always felt a little in awe of humanity. Like he knows we are destined for things he can never be. Twelve’s speech reminded me of Four’s in Ark in Space.

[Whoville @whoville]

Times headline: Eggsperts say no danger from moonshells

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@badwulf

I’m not entirely sure how intentional the pro-life angle was on the part of the production team.

I think it’s pretty clear that they noticed it – they made sure all three characters making the decision were played by female actors.

But I think it was simply a side effect of the central problem; if the Moon’s an egg, you’ve got to make the decision before the egg hatches. Because the whole problem is that you don’t know what will happen when the egg hatches.

It’s not really an abortion argument because there are very few people who would genuinely argue for the right to abort a full term, healthy foetus – in real life you’re talking ’emergency caesarian’ and a dash to save both mother and child.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@phaseshift I like your thoughts on the Twelfth Doctor as a “dead Time Lord walking”. I’m still hoping the Valeyard comes into this somewhere along the way.

There’s no doubt that the Doctor behaved abominably in this episode. I’m not sure this is just about his legacy. We’ve already gone there – remember River’s speech on the top of the pyramid about how she called for help to save the Doctor and millions of beings answered because of his impact on the universe? I think it’s more about – what should be one’s attitude to one’s resurrected life? At the moment, the Doctor is mired in self-recriminations. He can’t shake the choice the War Doctor made the first time around and, it seems, he can’t forgive himself in relation to his past (in one time stream) as the murderer of his people. He doesn’t think he’s a good man and as a result he’s behaving in a pretty difficult to be around manner at the moment.

This can only be resolved by the re-discovery of Gallifrey in its bubble universe and the Doctor’s thorny reunion with his home planet. In a way, although he’s procrastinating, my sense is that he feels he deserves to be judged there – a second Trial of a Time Lord.

It’s not the first time or incarnation in which the Doctor has projected some of his burdens onto his companions. I still remember thinking how inexpressibly dark it was that Nine took Rose to witness the end of the earth right at the start of their adventures. He asked a very young woman to feel the enormity of the death of her planet – that’s harsh. And, of course, exactly what he’d recently been through himself. But putting her through it too wasn’t a kind or a stable thing to do. It was, however, a sort of cry for help.

Similarly, in this episode, the Doctor projected his terrible choice (to use or not to use the Moment – to kill one set of people to save the universe) onto Clara and Courtney. This projection reveals the depths of his self-loathing. He, of course, made, in similar circumstances, the equivalent of the decision to nuke the moon dragon (first time around) and then had to live with it for three incarnations. The fact that Clara helped him change time does not mean he is letting himself off the hook. In fact, it would seem he is angry with her (quite unreasonably) because she found a way when he couldn’t. So, in this episode, he effectively punished her, by forcing her into a similar situation.

Basically, someone needs to kick the Doctor’s arse and twist his tail and drag him off to space therapy for a bit 🙂

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Oh I had  to laugh when I saw  the Telegraphs article  about  doctor who having perhaps becoming too frightening. I  remember classic who being more  frightening at times. It has always been historically a program that younger children find frightening and thrilling in almost equal measures. Now I know this will properly not mean anything to non British (BBC)  viewers of the show  but the last 2 weeks have actually been

What also gets me with this season it seems to have put on hold  what I assume everyone thought would be the the overall arc for the doctor of finding a way of returning Gallifrey to normal space. That is unless @badwulf bonkers theory that this is all a simulation that Missy is running to see if the doctor is worthy of a new regeneration cycle. 🙂

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@badwulf

for some reason it abandoned any pretence of scientific knowledge, and replaced it with “fantastical scientism”

I think there’s probably a reason behind that – namely that there’s a current tendency to pronounce definitively on things we don’t really know. We announce something is ‘scientifically impossible’ and forget to add the kicker.

According to our present knowledge.

If reality presents something that doesn’t agree with our theories, our theories are wrong.

Anyway, I had a trawl through the internet for ‘giant unicellular organism’ and found this. I think it’s eukaryotic, but it shows that single-celled organisms can look completely different to our ideas of them.

[Anonymous @]

@serahni – I agree, just like last week’s episode, this episode wasn’t as satisfying to me as I knew it should have been. But after watching it the second time, and trying to find solutions I could live with for the things I didn’t like, I definitely like this episode. It is at least an 8/10 for me now. I believe there is a good chance that it could be a very important episode in the story arc for Clara, so that will only improve it more.

 I agree that the science seemed to be pretty bad in this episode. The rubbishy science could be the toughest problem to solve. But I think solutions to those problems can be found with some bonkers theorizing.

 For example the weight of the moon increasing, while that contradicts the laws of conservation of energy, but the moon was really a Moon Dragon Egg (MDE). So if you believe that much, then maybe there is an answer for the weight increase too. Possibly the MDE absorbed (ate) photons from the sun for 100 million years, which caused the MDE to grow. Maybe it ate photons and other unknown sources of food, like dark matter, dark energy, or something from another dimension. I like that last one the best, because our dimension in relation to E-space might be similar to sea turtles burying their eggs in the sand on the beach, and when the turtles hatch they return to the sea (E-space dimension).

That is just a long way of saying what @bluesqueakpip did about explaining things we don’t know everything about.   The bacteria being one celled organisms could be fixed in a similar way, since the biology we know in our dimension might not be the same in other dimensions.

 With those two things fixed, the episode was very good imo.

 The attacking Giant Germ Spiders were easily the coolest, scariest monsters this season. And I think they are the number 3 monster for me. Too bad they will only appear once, but that didn’t stop me from putting the VashtaNerada number one.

 @Pedant’s ‘line of the episode’ is one of the things that make me think this could be an important part of Clara’s story arc.

 My favorite line: Tell me what you knew Doctor, or I’ll smack you so hard you’ll regenerate! 😆

 Danny’s scene with Clara was much better than before. I was expecting him to get mad at Clara for her not telling him the truth, but instead he was nice. He wasn’t harsh like before, he really just wanted to help this time. And I will definitely be thinking a while longer about what he said about bad days.

 I’m wondering why the Doctor would give Courtney vortex manipulators?   Maybe to practice not getting Taris Sickness, but now she can get into trouble anywhere in time and space! That can’t turn out good.  😯

[MTGradwell @mtgradwell]

@bluesqueakpip

Yup. In no particular order: Robin Hood exists, there’s a dragon in the Moon, dinosaurs were much bigger than we think they were, Daleks can become aware of their own evil, there appears to be life after death and bankers can repent of their misdeeds.
Am I spotting a pattern here? 😉

There’s been something implausible in every episode – it wouldn’t be Doctor Who otherwise; but that’s not the same as stretching the laws of physics beyond breaking point. Most of the examples you give don’t even involve science at all, at least as currently understood: e.g. the real physical existence of Robin Hood wouldn’t break any scientific laws that I know of, though it would sent a lot of historians back to the drawing-board; and life-after-death is something outside the realm of science, at least until it becomes a testable phenomenon with reproducible experiments. Besides, I suspect that the afterlife we’re being shown will turn out to be not “the” afterlife, but some reasonable facsimile thereof for which there will turn out to be a perfectly good explanation, though whether we will actually be given that explanation is another matter. I suspect that the explanation will be something like that of the library in “Silence in the Library”.

And it is possible to come up with explanations for the implausibilities in the earlier episodes if you try hard enough. For instance, we don’t have the fossilised skeletons of every dinosaur that ever existed, just a small and very unrepresentative sample. It’s entirely possible that there were T-Rexes or similar dinosaurs significantly larger than any we have in a museum. And in the case of the supposedly repentant banker, she did have many clones; it’s possible that the person we saw on her deathbed was not the banker herself but rather an escaped clone who never had anything to do with banking, and who was aware of what her clone-sisters had done and wanted to atone for it in some way.

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

I think some people are forgetting the Rule of Cool.

The MOON IS A FRIGGING GIANT SPACE EGG, people!

[Serahni @serahni]

Okay, so a second watching at least let me absorb a lot more.  I realised how very little I actually watched this morning through my bleary eyes and lack of caffeine, I think I had my eyes closed for half of it.  There’s no doubt there were some fine performances, I’m not sure there were any I outright disliked.  I still felt as if the storyline felt crammed in and rushed and that, once again, we have what feels like an anticlimax.  I sort of understand what you mean, @purofilion ,about this all feeling somehow surreal and other-worldly.  At the end of each episode of this season so far, I have felt as if something was incomplete and I’m starting to suspect it lies in The Doctor’s behaviour and motivations.  Yes, he’s been erratic.  Yes, he’s been abrasive.  Yes, he’s been caustic and dismissive and egotistical.  There are so many shades of his ‘younger’ self shining through that it’s been easy to get swept up in the nostalgia and delight at seeing a much different personality to the one we’ve been dealing with for much of this reboot.

There’s something….else, though.  I can’t shake the feeling that he senses something, or knows something, or fears something about what’s coming.  There is such simplicity to his abruptness at times that it almost seems like a charade, as if, to go back to the chess analogy, he really is moving the pawns around with such subtlety that he’s desperate they not find out his purpose…yet.  I suppose it’s just a belief that there is always method in his madness and that, somehow, The Doctor always exists in the ‘bigger picture’.  Every now and then, I am not convinced he is the big, bad Timelord he is pretending to be.  Then, other times…

As I watched tonight’s episode, I realised that the sentiment behind his behaviour and choices wasn’t really something that his previous incarnations wouldn’t have shared.  In ‘The Waters of Mars’, Tennant’s Doctor makes it nearly through the whole episode convinced that he shouldn’t interfere, and we are left without much doubt of his utter arrogance when he finally does.  The notion that The Doctor feels the pressure of being the one always having to make the big decisions isn’t necessarily a new one, but it is his chosen delivery in this that makes it seem so much harsher.  Clara is used to the overly-apologetic, emotive, desperately-passionate Smith incarnation who would have handled the same decision much differently.  Instead of making it seem like she should thank him for his trust, (and he did sort of genuinely seem to believe that he had acted out of extreme faith and trust in her), he likely would have apologised, looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes and practically pleaded with her to understand.  Clara, I have noticed, always responds best when she feels The Doctor needs her help.  In essence, that is who The Impossible Girl is, and the closest she’s really seemed to this version was his vulnerable moment in Glasgow, pleading with her to see him.  There’s still a neediness to him, but it comes with arrogance and sheer emotional efficiency and she appears to be lost.  Understandably, perhaps, but it still struck me as at least an indication of how much personality flavours these things.  It’s been easy to sit back and think, ‘Oh gosh, he’s being a jerk again!’ but I do wonder if he really has changed that much.

Anyway, that’s one great long ramble that I got from watching this again.  I still think we’re going somewhere big with all of this, I hope it’s worth the journey!  (It’s Who; of course it will be.)

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@pedant If the moon is a giant space egg, then why isn’t it egg-shaped? 🙂

Nintendo knows the score on egg shaped celestial bodies:

[janetteB @janetteb]

Have just got home after a six hour drive and watched “Kill the Moon.” I really enjoyed it, maybe because I am so tired, having been woken by squabling Cockies at the ungodly hour of 7.30 this morning or 8.30 as it turned out to be. Yes I think the replacement moon at the end was a little too “and they all lived happily ever after”, but then we had Clara’s outburst which left the end feeling like a good old fashioned cliff hanger. Will she rejoin the Doctor or not? Like @serahni I got the feeling that the Doctor knows stuff which he isn’t saying and his behavi0ur is not nearly as bad as it appears. There is something in his expression which suggests that he is holding back something and it is not because of a lack of compassion. Rather the reverse. Anyway too tired to ponder much more tonight. Will rewatch tomorrow when more awake.

Cheers

Janette

[janetteB @janetteb]

Oh two more random things, Tonight’s literary reference was to David Copperfield, doubt that signifies anything and the spider in the crack reminded me of the Shadows in B.5, again signifying nothing. I wondered why he was placing the books on the steps inside the Tardis at the end. He appeared to be looking for something.

@Purofilion, hope you are feeling better soon.

Cheers

Janette

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@mtgradwell

but that’s not the same as stretching the laws of physics beyond breaking point.

And this is pretty well what I’m saying. You’re missing off the ‘as they are currently understood’ bit.

I was very keen on planetary science as a schoolchild. Most of what I was taught? Completely wrong.

My A Level Physics teacher could remember being taught by someone who’d learnt about the aether at university.

The universe of Doctor Who? It has time travel. And faster than light travel. And teleportation (which has already been used to bring people back from the dead). All of which are completely friggin’ impossible …

… as far as we currently know.

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@bluesqueakpip The universe of Doctor Who? It has time travel. And faster than light travel. And teleportation (which has already been used to bring people back from the dead). All of which are completely friggin’ impossible …

… as far as we currently know.

 

True – although these breakings of the laws of physics are usually engaged in order to help tell a story – after all, you cannot have human colonies in other star systems without FTL (or generational ships). And teleport/transmat devices are a useful way of eliminating dull travelling/logistical concerns from a story, and in Who are very useful narrative-wise in allowing characters to move instantly in space without the safety of the TARDIS.

I can’t speak for @mtgradwell, but when I get disappointed with breaking the observed rules of science as currently understood it is usually when it is done in the service of lazy writing, i.e. to give a scientific-sounding explanation for something that doesn’t really need it.

Exhibit A (from my favourite SF franchise) would be midichlorians. The Force doesn’t need a technobabble explanation – the explanation we were given before was good enough for the suspension of disbelief, i.e. it is a mystical energy field generated by all living things, that binds the galaxy together.

It feels as if the writers had a case of “not only did we not do the research, but we don’t care if the audience knows that we didn’t do the research”. The prokaryote thing was a horrid example, it used a scientific term specifically to sound plausible, but was in actual fact both meaningless and pointless to the story.

[Anonymous @]

@serahni @badwulf and @arbutus and @janetteb (thank you for kind wishes for wellness) goodness what a ride. Did we hear “This is ground control”? I would have wanted a Major Tom but we had a Major Pete instead.

@pedant “The moon is a frigging giant space egg people!”  Oh, Cripes yes, half the episode I thought I was on drugs (not the legal morphine kind) but LSD. It could have been Yoko on that planet not that I felt Yoko-ed as Hermoine Norris was there!!! A hoot. But the lines (delivered in a Scottish accent): “an enormous baby” and the “moon is not my moon but it’s an egg and it’s never been dead it’s just wakin’ up and I think that’s utterly beautiful”. Totally LSD, dudes.

Then: “how do we kill it?” and “everything doesn’t have to be nice”. I loved the beginning but it was awfully sad – nonetheless just at the point I could laugh and shake my head when Hermoine says: “They chopped the top off the shuttle so the kids could ride in it”.

My face changed shape when she said “nobody cared about space”. That brought me back to earth quick smart.

It was an interesting statement about our intent as people, as explorers. There’s a scene in The West Wing when a character argues about why people want to go to Mars: “because it’s next, because we came out of the cave and we looked over the hill and saw fire and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the West and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a time-line of exploration and this is what’s next.”

On the Doctor and his upping the ante in cruelty,  he’s turned unengaged into a Zen-like thing, I think.

He seems totally unengaged at times: even where everything ostensibly seems to be about Clara and others making a “kill the crazy baby” decision (on their own in order to make space an uncharted possibility once again: I’m channelling William Shatner) and the Doctor leaves them to it, I wonder what he’s really doing? Is he hiding in Deep Space whilst clattering about on his chalkboard trying to solve a more serious problem such as “Who is he really?” and “Who is Clara?”

I found it interesting that we heard mention of regeneration twice (yeah, the show is about that) but it was noticeable when the Doctor dances with Yoyo (Ma-rs -geddit??) and laughs about ‘keeping on regenerating’? Is he less mindful of others because he’s not sorry or wounded,  hasn’t ‘forgotten’ or is no longer the lonely God?

Mind you, he acts like the Oncoming Storm and I felt deeply for Clara who has given so much for him. Did Hermoine act surprised when she heard Clara mention the Doctor was an alien or was the astronaut, faced with the death of Earth, obviously preoccupied and therefore disinterested in the Doctor’s ‘provenance’?

The “take off your training wheels” was dreadful: who jumped in his time stream? Or is there a nasty, hidden secret beyond that? Should he owe her? Should people do things for others because they love them, in this case “because he’s the Doctor and there’s no-one like him?”

Should it be for altruism? Is there really such a thing in a religious world or a humanist world? Was there ever?

We’ve had a dinosaur swallow the Tardis, a Dalek ‘digesting’ a miniaturised futuristic Section D and now an egg (containing parasitic spiders) becoming a creature to feast on Earth. This is quite the oddest season, evah!

G’night eggs, puro

 

[BadWulf @badwulf]

New bonkers theory: The Doctor didn’t want the Moon Dragon dead, because he didn’t want Missy getting her hands on it

[Anonymous @]

@janetteb I know the cockies drive me mad too! How was the holiday? Did you have what I call the coo-ee bird? It’s really loud and does this “oooooo-eeh” sound with the “eeh” going up a musical line. Sometimes it’s slow and you wait forever for the “eeh” bit & sometimes it’s so quick it immediately sings another. My dad, about 10 years ago, heard this bird in Hervey Bay which he was sure deliberately tracked him from Brisbane -like a bat. Bats are prone to this.

One morning, having set the alarm before the 5 am “oooooo-eeh”, he crept into the garden with a BB gun and went all Vietnam on it. No luck. Good thing, as he would’ve been arrested and having not allowed me to watch Dr Who, Streets of San Francisco, Columbo,  and Yes Minister, I wouldn’t have ‘bailed him out’. He could have been attacked by Bubba -in Hervey Bay, the Bubbas are flippin huge. Bigger than space eggs and spiders.

Incidentally, there’s a lego set from about 7 years ago, that featured an enormous shiny, red and black spider. It’s exactly the same as the one in Kill The Moon!

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@purofilion @janetteb

Cockies?

[janetteB @janetteb]

@badwulf, Racous birds which screech really early in the morning.

@purofilion The holiday was great thanks and just to keep it on topic we did not see any spiders, but lots of skippies and a leech which feasted on our friend’s ankle and we did indeed hear the “ooooo-eh bird”.

And before a mod gives me a Clara-slap for going off topic, I will turn this conversation back to Who. Having visited Mars and now the Moon, it is surely time the Doctor made his way back down to Oz to deal with cockies, skippies and ooooo-eh birds and our very own version of black and red spiders. I did think the spiders were quite scary, and I will repeat the point made earlier by @serahni. I think the Doctor is up to something which will redeem him. He is not beng callous or uncaring though as little clumsy when dealing with humans.

Cheers

Janette

[Irisess @irisess]

Frist of all. Hello im new here.

second. I really agree with badwulf on this one. The episode was really terrible.

Third. I know that it is not fair to say this, but I really think the 8 season is a little dull. Dont get me wrong, iT is not the doctor.  Essentially it is Clara who irritates me. Unlike madame Vastra Said, she IS shallow. She is cross with the doctor ALL the time and I think she doesnt even like him. Their relationship is weird.

Also the monsters so fare are pretty lame, and im still waiting for the thread that links them all to reveil it self (the woman from heaven of whatever). Steven moffat writes the best episodes, lease give us something epic like the whole River song saga.

in conclusion: new compagnon , beter monsters with weird powers. Storylines who links us to the past doctors (like the first episode, reference us to the madam pompadour; girl a the fireplace episode, from David ).

Greetings from Holland

( excuse my english gramma)

[MTGradwell @mtgradwell]

@bluesqueakpip

I was very keen on planetary science as a schoolchild. Most of what I was taught? Completely wrong.

OK there’s no jungles on Venus, but science never said there were, only that there might be, and pulp SF ran with that. And there are no canals on Mars, but science never said there were, it was just a misunderstanding due to a mistranslation of the Italian ‘canali’ (channels). And there are channels on Mars, albeit not ones that could plausibly be observed from Earth using an ordinary optical telescope. I don’t think planetary science has changed all that much in the last half century or so. Our knowledge has expanded as a result of robotic probes being sent all over the solar system, but nothing formerly established as fact has been overturned as far as I know. And even if something was, I don’t think it would quite compare to discovering that the moon is a giant egg.

But I was OK with the moon being a giant egg. Like I said initially, “Having the Moon be an egg was already stretching things, but having the imminent hatching of that egg causing Lunar gravity to multiply six-fold to match Earth-normal was a stretch too far.” I can accept some implausibility, but there has to be some limit to the number of stretches per episode, beyond which we have to recognize that any tenuous connection to reality has been severed and we are wholly in the realm of fantasy.

So maybe I should loosen up, and accept both the moon being an egg and its gravity increasing sixfold or so. After all, there’s “rule of cool” and all that, and haven’t stranger things happened in Who previously? Maybe, but those two things are just the start. Once again, with emphasis: ALL of the science was garbage. ALL of it. I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface.

The Doctor first notices that the gravity is stronger than it should be when he is aboard the shuttle which is approaching the moon; but that could be due to the shuttle’s deceleration, in much the same way that your weight seems to increase when you’re in an elevator which slows towards the end of its descent. But how IS the shuttle decelerating? Parachutes and wings don’t work in the absence of an atmosphere, and the shuttle doesn’t have forward-facing engines. To be using its engines to decelerate it should really be landing facing backwards. And doing that would require huge amounts of fuel, especially with the moon’s gravity being suddenly increased six-fold. Where was all that fuel stored? Did the Shuttle have huge fuel tanks that were discarded just before the Tardis arrived? How was the undersurface of the shuttle reinforced enough for it to land on the rough lunar surface without it being torn apart? Then the Doctor uses a yoyo to illustrate that something is wrong, and says that they should all be “bouncing around like fluffy little clouds”. But 1/6g is not the same as zero g, and a yoyo should still work in 1/6g, though it might require a change in technique. And so on. All of that is from just a few seconds near the start. I could go on and on.

With the yoyo it does at least look like the writers are trying to inject some real science into the story, I’ll give them that, but I don’t think they quite pull it off successfully. And having the shuttle land on the moon, facing forward in much the same way that it did for an Earth landing, but without a parachute … well, it’s probably not beyond the powers of a really advanced technological civilisation, but are we really going to get that advanced in the next thirty-five years?

By now I’m not quite as horrified by all this as I was on initial viewing, and I can see that there is some cleverness in the story. It’s clever to have the old moon disappear and be almost instantly replaced by a new one. It echoes countless myths and legends, and it explains how the Doctor can visit the far future and “the” (actually “a”) moon is still there, and nobody in the future remarks on its former disappearance because it was such a brief blink-and-you-miss-it thing. It’s clever but it’s pure myth, not science. It’s too convenient that the new moon immediately replaces the old one, and looks exactly like it.

[PhileasF @phileasf]

I disliked this episode less on the second viewing…

In between viewings I had a chance to think about my main gripe, the increase in the Moon’s gravity. I think the increased gravity, as experienced by people standing on the Moon’s surface, could actually be explained by localised increases in the density of the matter beneath certain points on the surface — i.e. because that matter was being concentrated into a big space creature. However, I don’t think it is at all feasible that Courtney could experience ‘normal’ 1/6g lunar gravity while the other characters were still experiencing gravity of 1g. They were all so close together that any plausible mass within the moon, consistent with the story, exerting a gravitational influence on one of them, would affect them all about equally.

Also, localised increases in density within the Moon would not explain why the Moon now exerts a greater gravitational influence on the Earth. That must have a different explanation, such as the Moon moving a lot closer to the Earth, while still looking about the same size in the sky. Or lots of matter arriving on the Moon from somewhere else without anyone noticing.

And if the Moon’s gravitational attraction increased a lot, I think more would be affected than tides. The whole Earth/Moon relationship would be altered. Unless the Moon started revolving about the Earth a lot faster, I think it and the Earth would probably start to spiral towards each other and eventually collide. But I Am Not a Physicist.

These gravitational nitpicks could, I’m sure, be explained in a way that makes sense in the Doctor Who universe. But they weren’t.

Also, the seeming cluelessness of one of the astronauts seemed unlikely. Maybe he joined the mission late, but you’d think someone would have thought to mention how the bombs work during the trip. It seemed like a laugh at the expense of plausibility.

My last nitpick: why did they go to the trouble of bringing all those bombs to the Moon? Before they knew the nature of the problem, how did they think those would help? The screams of the miners may have made them suspect hostile aliens in need of nuking… but then why not bring guns as well?

This, by the way, explains everything: the universe was rebooted from Amy’s memories, so any implausibilities must result from her lack of knowledge of science. Maybe when she was a kid she wondered if the Moon could be an egg. So it is. 🙂

Now that I think of it… what were Amy’s views on the afterlife?

Some non-nitpick thoughts and observations.

– Clara is, in a manner of speaking, in the Doctor’s orbit; at the end she seems to break away from his influence. The Moon Dragon flying away from the Earth is a metaphor for what’s going on in Clara’s story.

– This is one of the few Doctor Who episodes that would pass the ‘Bechdel test‘. (There’s more than one woman in the story, and women talk about something other than a man.) Not many Doctor Who episodes pass the test, which is unsurprising for a show with a male main character. If I recall correctly, Into the Dalek passes (because of Gretchen and Missy’s scene). And The Big Bang (Amelia and the child psychologist). I’m sure there are more.

– Given the limited information available, if I believed setting off the bombs would save the Earth and kill the creature, I’d have set off the bombs. Interestingly, the moral question seems entirely focused on whether it’s OK to kill the creature to save the Earth. Clara, Courtney and Lundvik would also die. Don’t their lives count for something?

– Nobody knows if the creature is sentient or not. Would you risk the Earth to save a baby squirrel? A baby rat? A mosquito larva?

– And hey, what if the question was reversed: should you gamble with the Earth to save one unknown space creature? I think, as a general rule, you shouldn’t gamble with the Earth.

– Clara’s decision is consistent with her tendency to take care of children.

– The Doctor’s lack of awareness of the outcome was interesting. I accepted that he really didn’t know how things would turn out or what would be the outcome of each choice. As far as I could tell, a previously unknown future was created the moment Clara and Courtney acted on their choice. From that instant, the Doctor knows how the future will unfold because he remembers that future. It’s only after that moment that he can return to Clara and co without influencing their decision, to save them from the breakup of the egg.

– The Doctor’s lack of knowledge of the future has a great parallel in the BG series, in Pyramids of Mars. In that story, set in 1911, Sarah says they should just get in the TARDIS and leave, because they know everything is fine in 1980, where she comes from. So the Doctor takes her to 1980, where the Earth is now a lifeless rock. In that case, choosing to go ’causes’ a future where the Earth is destroyed. They get a preview of what ‘happened’ when they left without trying to defeat the villain. I’m not sure this version of time travel is consistent with the current series though.

– What if they’d left when Clara said they should? I think almost everything would have been OK, except that Lundvik would have died too. She’d almost certainly have been killed by spider germs before being able to detonate the bombs. And all the panic created by Clara telling the world ‘There’s a huge space creature in the Moon! It might kill us all!’ would have been averted. They weren’t voting when the lights went out. That was the fear-crazed rioters taking out the power grid 🙂

– Perhaps unusually, judging by other comments, I think the Doctor did the right thing by leaving humans to make the choice. He displays a kind of humility in ensuring he doesn’t dictate humanity’s future. For one thing, he might take risks with humanity’s future that humans wouldn’t, because he isn’t one and he might not care more about them than he cares about a unique space creature. If he even offered an opinion about what he thought would happen, that would certainly influence Clara and would be little different than just making the decision himself. And he can’t really just stand there trying not to express an opinion on what’s going on. Given that the outcome of the choice is genuinely a gamble, it seems right to me that humans should take that gamble.

– In The Caretaker, the Doctor was criticised for being an officer. In Kill the Moon Clara wants him to be more like an officer and remove her need to exercise judgment and make choices.

– The Doctor tells Courtney, ‘Don’t try that at home.’ I think this was to stop kids in the audience from spraying spiders with disinfectant, which would be cruel.

– If only Sally Sparrow had known she had to hang onto the console 🙂

– I laughed at Courtney’s parody of Neil Armstrong’s speech after first stepping onto the Moon.

– On a completely trivial note, the Doctor works out the date by noting the presence of an early ‘Bennett oscillator’. A Bennett oscillator also helps him estimate the date in The Ark in Space. (It was named for the director of that story, Rodney Bennett.) You can see it on tumblr 🙂

– The Charles Dickens quote on the whiteboard, the first few sentences of David Copperfield, may be pertinent to Clara’s story:

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

(I can’t easily see how much of the quote is included on the whiteboard. It may show less than I have quoted.)

Will Clara be the hero of her own story, or will that station be held by anybody else? And like David, Twelve made her cry 🙂

[PhileasF @phileasf]

PS… on a bonkers theorising note: if this episode had aired last year we’d have discussed the flickering lights and the egg. Maybe all those flickering lights and eggs are still going to turn out to mean something?

[Arbutus @arbutus]

Wow. That was exciting. Giant spiders, seriously, a bit of a “thing” for me, so there were a couple of really scary moments. I will need a rewatch, so much happened so fast. A few things stand out for the moment:

Right after they landed on the moon and met the astronaut (she was great, btw), the juxtaposition of the Doctor’s “banter” with the very ominous background music was interesting.

Callback to what we were talking about the other day, when Clara said something like “Tell me that wasn’t alive?”, and the Doctor said, “I could but it wouldn’t make it true.” The Doctor doesn’t lie for comfort.

When I say run, run!   🙂

When Clara said that she knew the moon didn’t blow up because there was still a moon in the future, I could only think that Clara has some things to learn about parallel timelines!

You could see Clara’s disenchantment with the Doctor growing throughout the episode. And at the end, her “I’m really done with him” business sounded so much like someone who “doth protest too much” that I was really pleased that Danny called it as well. I liked Danny in his short scene, I was happy that Clara had him to talk to. I’m looking forward to learning more about his “really bad day”. I’m not sure yet whether I think Clara’s anger with the Doctor is fair or not. I was definitely on her side regarding his cavalier treatment of Courtney. Not sure yet about the rest of it. Interesting episode, lots to think about.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

I felt this episode confirmed what I had been feeling about all of series 8 so far: it seems as if this series is more about Clara than about the Doctor. This is Clara’s journey. To where? As others have noted, probably to somewhere beyond the Doctor. Whether that is with Danny, or somewhere more tragic (and there are precedents in AG Who) isn’t clear yet.

But Clara really seems to be even more central that the Doctor in this series. I know that it was “all about” Amy  and I know that Clara  was “the impossible girl”, but Clara is really occupying centre-stage this time around. In a funny sort of way, in some of the episodes Capaldi’s Doctor is off to one side (in a way that Matt Smith’s Doctor never was), or, in the case of this episode, consciously absents himself. Not sure what to make of it yet.

The other thing is that he seems strangely ignorant of things. Age for example. It is not just in this episode that he makes a bizarre comment about age: “How old are you…(to Courtney)…35?” Someone upstream made a brilliant point that it is as if the Doctor, on a second set of regenerations, beyond what is intended (natural?), is, like Rassilon and the Master, “damaged” somehow.

So, not much to say about the actual episode. Like many others, I need a second viewing. But what does seem to be clear is that many of us on the board are strangely…puzzled…by how this series is unfolding.

 

[lisa @lisa]

For the rest of my life I shall look at the Moon in the night sky and think of it as an egg = egg-cellent !!

the sci-fi of the past didn’t always get the science right – so the sci-fi of the present doesn’t necessarily have to either – I think of Doctor Who as Sci-fi fantasy – that’s how I manage to get my head round all the
odd inconsistent bits

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@badwulf

Cockies. Not exactly relevant to this thread, but to answer your question with light and sound, here is a clip. I have lived in a number of locations in Australia, and this can be just what it is like outside your bedroom window (usually on a Sunday morning, when you are trying to sleep in).

 

 

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Just watched the episode again, now whilst I have a lot to think about especially in combination with what others have said. Before I make any further comments I want to confirm something I thought I observed; On the beach when they were watching moon egg hatch did anyone else think that the doctors face go a sort of grey. It almost looked like PC was having a cardiac event. :s

[iaredil @iaredil]

Hi, just like Irisess, I’m new here too.

Really enjoyed reading everyone’s comments. I wanted to quote and reply, but I’m not sure how to do it, and I’m actually too lazy to work it out right now. LoL.

Regarding this episode my comments are:

1) Moon = egg = I can never accept this part of the storyline. End.

2) After lots of thinking, I appreciated how the Doctor left the blowing up the moon decision to humans. I started following Doctor Who during the 9th, so I think we’ve all gotten used to the Doctor being the hero and saving the universe. So just like Clara, I totally freaked out when the Doctor up and left. But after reading the comments, I had to let go of my anger to the Doctor. This episode taught me that sooner or later, not even he has all the answers. Which I honestly think makes the story so thrilling because we get to discover new things with the Doctor, instead of hm being the know it all :p

3) Courtney was an entertaining character, but I do kinda hope she’s not the next companion. Of course, I’m just being biased for no reason now, but truthfully, even if she does become the next companion, I’m just gonna accept it anyways. And I have no idea why I’m expressing this thought out.

4) I’m kinda really hoping for Danny to join in the Tardis. Anytime soon would be great please. Although it would really make his and Clara’s teacher life reeaaalllyyy hectic.

5) Since it’s my first time here, I just gotta say how much I’m loving the 12th. There’s this new and fresh hecticness and frenzy just oozing out. The forgetful, rude and dismissive personality is very entertaining. Now, to anyone who’s reading this, keep in mind that I started following during the 9th, so I have no idea how the 1st – 8th were like. I’m just making a stand that Capaldi is an excellent Doctor contrary to what some other people think. Although now that I think about it, I don’t think those people would be on this thread. Hrm…..

Okay, enough ranting. Conclusion: minus the whole egg thing, this episode was thrilling! I’d put it 2nd after ‘Listen’, because that episode scared the daylights out of me.

And now I leave with Courtney’s line: “Is it a chicken?”

-Dil-

 

[Anonymous @]

Plain and simple, this doctor is my favorite by far.  Clara, needs to go.  Loved this episode because I don’t waste my time analyzing the science, I analyze the story.  They have 45 minutes to tell a story, you can’t waste time pressurizing a cabin or other luxuries of a movie.

i felt the doctor was generous and spot on with his actions.  This is a new doctor and a new time.  Capaldi is fantastic for this iteration of the doctor.

This is my first post, but I enjoy reading the theories about where this is leading, but not so much the critics of small production details.  It’s a 45 minute a week show.  Limited budget.  It’s brilliant.  Doctor who is one of the only sci fi shows I enjoy.  Falling skies is another.

thanks

[iaredil @iaredil]

” But what does seem to be clear is that many of us on the board are strangely…puzzled…by how this series is unfolding.”

Yes, I agree. Even after “Inside the Dalek” I’ve been trying very hard to dismiss the um…new things happening and just trying to enjoy time traveling with the Doctor and Clara. “Listen”, although wonderfully thrilling, just made me confused (I haven’t looked up any threads for conversations of this episode yet.) “Kill the Moon”, although better than “The Caretaker”, just…well…kinda made me wanna bang my head against a wall.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

OK, in light of the second viewing, I would single out the final confrontation between Clara and the Doctor as the whole point of the episode. The actual story itself (the threat that is revealed to be a life that deserves compassion and protection) has been done elsewhere by Moffat (the star whale, the teller), but what is different here is Clara.

@whoville made a great reference to the episode having a Childhood’s End kind of vibe, and yes, it does, but I think it is more about Clara moving on from the secure protection of the Overlord/Doctor than it is humanity–after all, humanity was prepared to sacrifice the creature (not that Australia, Asia, or most of the southern hemisphere, got to have an opinion, of course!)

As I read that last confrontation between Clara and the Doctor, he came across (to me, anyway) as in no way condescending or patronising. He really thought he was doing the right thing, and was genuinely surprised by the response he received from Clara. But when we lash out at those we care for, we are more than often angry with ourselves. Clara prides herself on her caring and authoritative nature as the school teacher, but when the Doctor stepped aside to let her decide, instead of saving the day, as usual, she was frightened, and angry with herself because she was frightened. And so, was angry with him.

So, on second viewing I enjoyed the way it ended. And I am looking forward to the way their relationship is going to play out. But (partly for reasons given in my post above after my first viewing), I am totally stumped for bonkers theories!

Except, that is for the Michael Powell connection to the promised land–to which I will ruminate (and not, @thommck, urinate!) on.

[Arbutus @arbutus]

Wow. So many great and interesting comments, I’m not sure how to go about responding to all of them. And as usual, because I’m a bit late in joining, some of my initial responses are rendered irrelevant by what comes later. But I’ll have a go.

@badwulf, I was going ask you to explain your problems with the science, not being “sciency” myself, but you and others have done that really well. I do have sympathy for the issue of implausible explanations that are actually unnecessary, but tend to have a relaxed attitude toward the use of “scientism” (great term!). As @bluesqueakpip’s list suggests, we all have our own areas of touchiness. For some of us, it’s “For heaven’s sake get the science right!” For some of us it’s historical anachronisms, for some of us it’s “believable” character behaviour, and so on. Fair enough, actually.

@mtgradwell    As a historian myself, I’m not sure it’s fair to state that a problem with history is less of a problem than one of physics. It just bothers you less. The history ones tend to bug me, although I’ll admit that I chose not to be bothered with Robots of Sherwood, because I enjoyed it so much, and because I felt that the parable they were trying to create excused the lack of realism. I didn’t realize that until the very end, though, so I was prepared to be pretty irritated with the suggestion that Robin and his Merry Men all existed exactly the way the stories portray them. I think this is related to @pedant’s Rule of Cool, which is a principle I have always espoused, although I hadn’t seen it spelled out before.

I was going to send out this challenge to @BonkersTheorists. Can you come up with explanations for the “bad science” in this episode? And then, I saw this, from @phileasf:    This, by the way, explains everything: the universe was rebooted from Amy’s memories, so any implausibilities must result from her lack of knowledge of science.   Well done! Can there be a medal?

[Arbutus @arbutus]

@badwulf    I agree that I wasn’t quite sure about the point of letting humanity vote and then overriding the decision. As a few people have pointed out, they could only see half the planet, for one thing. And frankly, it was predictable that the majority would say “kill it”. I probably would too, if this were real life. It might have been better to let them make the decision without consulting humanity first.

But @bluesqueakpip suggests: “I think what the episode may have been trying to hint at is that ‘the moral decision’ and ‘what everyone wants to do’ are not necessarily the same thing.” This is certainly a possibility, although I’m not sure how successfully the message comes through. But I liked this thought as well: “It’s always wrong. It’s wrong when the Doctor does it, it’s wrong when Kate Stewart is prepared to do it, and it’s wrong when it’s a baby dragon and the entire world wants to do it.”

As for a “rational external entity” making the choice, I’m not so sure that the Doctor’s decision would be more rational. Just different. @phileasf said: “In The Caretaker, the Doctor was criticised for being an officer. In Kill the Moon Clara wants him to be more like an officer and remove her need to exercise judgment and make choices.” This is an excellent point.

@miapatrick said: “But by now the Doctor has been with us enough, been here enough, to have a stake in the matter.”  I think this Doctor is deliberately trying to take a step back. He has decided that, fondness for humanity notwithstanding, these are not his people, and in this case, it’s not his choice to make. However, you also said this: “And then the choice is made by a person who has the best chance pretty much in the whole world of surviving whatever happens.” I think, on reflection, that I would have been happier had the astronaut made the decision to abort, based perhaps on Clara’s certainty, rather than Clara interfering and pushing the button herself.

[Arbutus @arbutus]

Random thoughts about random comments:

@juniperfish     Yes, I loved the moment where the president is revealed to be a “she”, and then a moment later, the Doctor refers to “womankind”.   🙂

@apopheniac   Was is just me who saw them slo-mo running and thought, sigh?   No, I had exactly the same thought. That felt contrived and unnecessary to me.

@pedant   I thought of the space whale as well. There was a similar moral decision involved in that story.

@janetteb  Yes, what was the Doctor looking for at the end?

@purofilion   “This is ground control.” Yes! I too was awaiting Major Tom. And great story about your father and the bird. Reminds me of my stepfather in Alberta trying to pot Richardson ground squirrels with a BB gun. Traps are just too easy for some people.

@phileasf   Great parallel with Pyramids of Mars. I don’t think that the two views of time travel are irreconcilable, actually. In choosing to leave 1911 without stopping Sutehk, they created one timeline, and by going back and defeating him, they created another.

@irisess   Welcome! (Nice fez.) Do you really have an English Gramma, that needs to be excused? What did she do wrong? (Sorry, so sorry! Joke!) Personally, I am enjoying Clara more in this series than I did in the last. But it’s true that she and the Doctor are often snarky with one another. Ultimately, Clara may never get over the Doctor’s regeneration. It’s entirely possible that he will never be her Doctor. Which, regardless of Madame Vastra’s attitude, I could completely understand.

[Arbutus @arbutus]

@juniperfish    I’m not so sure that the Doctor’s ambivalence about his own morality comes from Time War at this point. I wonder if it’s a more general angst related to living a long time and having had more power than most of those around you. As PhaseShift says:     The few Time Lords we’ve seen who have had extended life (Rasillon, The Master) were a bit …well …odd. A tendency to wear their underpants on their head and proclaim themselves masters of the Universe. You know the score.

The Doctor may well be thinking along these lines too.

 

[Anonymous @]

Wonder if there is any thought on the comment The Doctor says about Courtney “She’ll grow up to be president”.   Quite a bit in this episode to digest.  Thankfully there has been quite a few excellent comments from you all.  I give this episode 5 stars for stirring thought.

To me and my 11 year old daughter (who loves this Doctor), he wasn’t being rude at all, Clara was just over reacting.  This is the first year my daughter says she doesn’t like Clara, though we both agree her acting / script has stepped it up a notch.  She’s just too angry and defensive all of the time.

I still want to know why Pink had a bad day.  I’m reading something into that, I don’t know what though.

BTW, how are you all replying to individual posts?  I don’t see a reply with quote option.

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@Goldmember I still want to know why Pink had a bad day.  I’m reading something into that, I don’t know what though.

I think he has been out doing missions for Missy, because I’ll bet he died in the cause of duty

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@Goldmember

BTW, how are you all replying to individual posts?  I don’t see a reply with quote option.

Just type @ followed by the name of the person you are responding to (no gaps after the @) and it will come up. The Blockquote option is at the top of the box you are typing into .

Cheers.

[Seventhwheel @seventhwheel]

Overall an okay episode.

Best quote of the season to date ” Tell me or I’ll smack you so hard you regenerate”
I actually laughed out loud. Brilliant!

The episode itself was a nice feelgood “pro -life” journey with some rather faulty pseudo science to carry it.

The kid floating… and nothing else, not even pens or headsets because “it moved”. Terrible.

The spider bacteria. Just “No”
They served no purpose other than to be confusing. They’re bacteria, so why the webs? They’re spiders, so why did disinfectant kill it instantly. They love the warmth but hate the sun, they multiply in the dark caves but spin webs on the doors and all along the walls but don’t multiply there. I could go on. Suffice to say “No”

You know that if it’s in the egg or outside it the mass is still the same right? So they go to a beach, right on the sandy shore. Where the massive tides are destroying the world and all life is threatened … and watch from the edges of the lapping waves… on the side of the planet facing the moon. Odd?

Then creature the size of the moon laid a new egg/moon. Total time to lay an egg a few thousand miles across and then vanish into the universe: less than 1 monologue.

Suspension of disbelief : ON

Still, one of the better episodes.

This would have been better with Pink along. It could have served to reinforce the relationship that supposedly exists and would have taking some of the frenzied pace out of the last episode where it all felt too rushed.
Plus the kid contributed nothing.

I just hope this is all going somewhere.

7th.

[Anonymous @]

@badwulf that makes sense.  Guess a bad day is when something lives and doesn’t make it to missy.   Very cool.   Thanks

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@Goldmember It is just a bit of bonkers theorising – I’ve never been right before, so I don’t expect to be right this time. My mind just does not work in the same way as the Moff, or even RTD. (Or JNT, thankfully!)

[Anonymous @]

@badwulf btw, the quote doesn’t work on my iPad.   I’ve never been able to anticipate moff, but find the show somewhat predictable each episode, but hard to read where they are going.  I have to admit, would have been kind of cool to see 100 nuke go off and see the “alt” future.

[scotsman418 @scotsman418]

That is the worst episode of this new season….and I am now looking forward to seeing his sexy assistant being left with the Daleks so that they can deal with her because her character has become far to critical of the Dr’s actions. Also, she wants to settle down with her fellow teacher anyway and so it’s now time for a new assistant especially NOT that annoying little school girl, as her memories need to be wiped and blogging their antics on a website too should taken out and shot at dawn for doing that..

Sorry, but the person that came up with the idea that a space like dragon hatches from  an egg aka moon then lays another one BIGGER than itself come on the person that came up with that was seriously clutching at straws hoping the viewers would buy that one, plus the Producer should be sacked too for ok’ing that crap even though they have schedule to keep in creating the season!

With the moon gone there would be no tidal movement meaning everything would begin to die that lives in the oceans, and the movement of cold & warm waters effect the polar ice caps which in turn controls the world’s surface temperature causing catastrophic weather conditions upon the surface of the planet.

Also, trying to pass off BIG scarey spiders as bacteria come on it looks to me the person that came up with storyboard and script writers were on two different planets at the time i.e. the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing till it was to late to fix the episode to make it better than having the moon as a giant freakin egg????

[Melloyello @melloyello]

Hi all, new here……

 

After this episode, the thought occurred to me, “could Courtney Woods be River Song?”

One thing I could be missing, and you all could help me out, was it established, in the show,

that  the little girl, who escaped from the space suit, regened into Melody (Amy Pond’s childhood friend)?

Or was that just an assumption on our part?  Until it is shown to me, this is what I base my thoughts around.

 

1. River Song stated she has seen all the doctors. I think it was the episode when Tennant first met River in the

library that had the shadows.  When did she see the current Dr?

2. Courtney was described as a “disruptive influence”, something Melody was clearly shown to be.

3.  Capaldi has made several references back to previous doctors, and one was being forced to go back

in time to “kill Hitler”, which was stated in front of Courtney AND was done by Melody.

4. Vortex Manipulators, that were used by River was worn by Courtney.

5. River would whip out a gun at the drop of a hat.  Melody whipped out a gun.  Courtney used a spray

gun, but the idea is the same.  You grip, point, pull trigger and shoot.

 

So, until I’m educated about who the little girl regen’ed into, I’m leaning toward the idea that Courtney

may be River Song.  If Courtney is River, the reason the Dr left, leaving the decision of the moon up the

the three women, may not have been for Clara or the astronaut, but for Courtney to get used to being

in a life and death situations, and making a quick decision, much like River did in many times.

 

As far as the moon being a giant egg and the scientific accuracy surrounding the story, well, that may have

been the plan, to get people discussing that, and miss the small important info, that is building the

large series plot.  Moffat has been VERY GOOD at presenting things, that allow the viewers own imagination

to send them down a dead end street.  Melody Pond, aka River Song, I think we all missed that one.

 

Anyway,  what do you think?

[Spider @spider]

@scotsman418 Sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy the episode. That’s totally up to you of course but….

“Looking forward to the assistant being left with the Daleks?” What are you talking about? Are you referring to Asylum? Because that is an old episode with a different character.

Although I’m not totally with any of the science in this episode (most of it is total nonsense) I can let a lot of it slide cos…you do get this is SCI FI (and/or fantasy type sci fi you know?). Time traveling blue box for example? You accept that but not giant spider egg? Please…

Life in the oceans does not solely rely on tidal motions. The movement of the currents and the weather is far more to do with temperature differential than anything to do with the moon. The sun has more effect on that does it not?.

Why can’t big scary spider be bacteria? Have you seen electron microscope close ups of these things, they are frigging weird!

You are entitled to your opinion of course. And bring up some very good points.  But…just blasting out criticism at the writers/producers? Please. You want anyone to listen, bring a better argument.

 

[Author]

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