In which the Doctor flies Courtney Woods to the moon, into a future that's more than a little terrifying, and shoehorns Clara into his footsteps.
What Kill the Moon lacks in plot (a very great deal) it makes up for in acting, which is utterly superb and sublime. Peter Capaldi always excels but here, playing against Hermione Norris, he is in a whole other league bringing entirely different energy to his performance. Jenna Coleman raises her game considerably and the only one left floundering is Ellis George, who plays Courtney Woods.
Peter Harness (who penned this episode) cut his teeth on crime drama. He's an alumni of Kenneth Brannagh's Wallander series and, apparently, also dramatised the Jackson Brodie Case Histories for the BBC. Structure-wise this shows in the first, fantastic, half hour of the episode. Pacing is taut, there's a real frisson as a darkened, abandoned, space station, shot through with torch-light, reveals webbing, desiccated corpses and - really giant, alien spiders. Harness and the Doctor may state that they're microbes but, really, take it from someone who hates the damn things: Giant Alien Spiders.
Pacing, lighting (or creative use of darkness) and excellent use of sound made the first part of this episode really, really, creepy. The skittering, screeching, sound of those microbe-spiders had the hairs on the back of my neck standing bolt upright. Thank you very much Milk. Pacing aside, Harness also brings his expertise from Jackson Brodie to bear in the way he views the Doctor, here writing him as a disappointed, older, man. A man in the position of surrogate father, who isn't wholly successful at it. Not that Clara's half as cute as Marlee, played in the BBC's Case Histories by Millie Innes.
Harness seems to be a fan of Classic Who. Thus, I wonder if his portrayal wasn't influenced by the First Doctor. If so, his take on the Doctor and his relationship with his companions would fit, although it doesn't fit with Clara's particular backstory, or rather her character arc. More on that in a moment.
The first part of the episode is all action, with the Doctor stepping, bouncing and leaping in to action, armed with a bottle of detergent and a yoyo. That, I loved. The yoyo string dripping with amniotic fluid was more of an issue. I could, of course, ask how he - or even his trusty sonic screwdriver - could tell what the amniotic fluid of a creature older than the solar system is like. But, this is primarily a show aimed at children. It's family viewing. Older children will probably have heard of amniotic fluid, and so would know the moon was pregnant. Call it anything else, and more time will need to be expended on explanations.
Having cast an eye across the LJ Doctor Who comm last Saturday evening, I did notice people read the fate of the hatchling (and egg-moon) as anti pro-choice subtext. And Tim Stanely in the Torygraph seems to have grasped that reading and run with it. It's not a reading which resonates with me. In my opinion Kill the Moon is an eco drama; just not as we know it Doctor. Each year people turn off electric lights as a symbol of their commitment to save the ecosystem, marking Earth Hour. And here people in the developed world turn off their lights, once again, to try and save the earth. Of course the irony inherent in the script is that it pits nuclear disaster again natural disaster, albeit one of an alien bent. Harness beautifully posits the question: Is human life more important than other life? More so, this episode asks: Is one unique life form is more important than billions of other life forms? And, it accuses our race of being speciest and insular, while entreating us to be more than that.
That is why the Doctor stands on the beach, at the tail end of the episode, looks up at the freshly hatched moon-egg, and tells the story of how the alien creature inspired humanity to travel to the stars, explore, colonise and eventually find their way to the end of the universe. As the Doctor asks of his companions, here he asks man and womankind (and Captain Lundvick) to look up at the universe and see wonders, not horrors. So too, in correlation the Doctor asks the audience to look across the world with an eye to possibility, not death, doom and destruction.
If we didn't know that Gallifrey's fate was changed by all thirteen Doctor's, that his home planet didn't fall, and that the Doctor is therefore not the last of his kind, I'd draw allusions between his wonder at this unique alien species he's never come across before -and his own self. But, I do not see the eggshell, nor the scanned sonogram, as mirror.
"It's time to take the stabilisers off your bike"
As the Doctor's companion Clara's role is to bring the viewer along for the ride - to the moon, into wonder and adventure. The companion stands in for the everyman/woman/teenager, and that is also the role Courtney Woods is placed in, in this episode. If Clara Oswin Oswald was any other companion, this might work. Her horror at being placed in an intolerable position, left to make a impossible decision, would be valid if this was any other companion but Clara. For she is the Impossible Girl. Oh, not because Eleven dubbed her so, but because she dived into his time stream in Trenzelore, saw all the Doctor's faces and ran after him trying to stop the Great Intelligence from erasing his very existence. That does rather pre-suppose she was placed in impossible, intolerable, situations before - doesn't it? That the stabilisers on her bicycle were ripped off by the eddies of time and space? Clara is not your ordinary everyday companion. But someone seems to have forgotten to remind Peter Harness of that.
Courtney Woods? She represents most viewers, and most teens. It's through her presence that Harness gets to make an oblique point about the youth of today, the twenty-first century, Tumblr obsessed teenagers (fans?) and children expecting to be told that they're special. That teaser really made me think of the American Graduation speech which went viral and then turned into a book. Couple with the Space Shuttle being American (Stars and Stripes displayed on the wall) and Courtney growing up to be U.S. President and I rather feel as if they're writing Doctor Who with more of an eye on the export that the domestic market. Kudos though on a female president, and a nod to the Blinovich Limitation Effect, to Courtney possibly having met a Mr. Aaron Blinovich from Paul Cornell's Doctor Who novel Timewyrm: Revelation . I like the timey-whimey synchronicity of Courtney being the President whose advice they would have asked, if she were being consulted. Of course, in the UK have Prime Ministers. And, only those born in the 51st States can currently become a US President. So, either the UK is an officially recognised US colony, in 2049, or there's an Earth president. Take your pick.
When the going gets tough Courtney wants to go home and play on Tumblr. Clara too wants to rely on the timeline as she knows it and ignore those devious, dangerous, little moments when the future can change in the blink of a TimeLord's eye.
It can be said that only two people on the moon really grasp the repercussions, possibilities, nightmare and dream of the situation are the Doctor and Captain Lundvik. She sees catastrophe, where the Doctor sees wonder and possibility. Lundvik would blow up an alien creature to ensure the survival of all that she knows. And the Doctor? His wonder at a life form previously unseen in all his centuries of existence is vey real; and gorgeously played by Peter Capaldi. His desire to abstain from the decision?
My first reaction was to take this as bad characterisation. To wonder how a man who stood on a hospital roof and proclaimed the earth under his protection, a man who chose the earth as his second home, especially in the centuries and lifetimes that he believed he had no other (and here I mean planetoid home, in that the TARDIS is home, carapace, and companion) would just wash his hands of the planets fate, and sit this decision out. But, earth isn't under attack. Destruction may have be the by-product of this creature's birth, but there isn't an alien intelligence seeking to destroy, or subjugate, another species. Taking that into account, it seemed more likely he wouldn't wish to decide the fate of one innocent, unique, life versus that of a billion others.
Yet the whole thing smacks of Encounter at Farpoint Station - again. I am uncomfortable with the Doctor taking on shades of Q from Star Trek the Next Generation. But, if that episode, in someway, inspired Kill the Moon then that posits the question, is the Doctor being pressured to act as he does? In The Next Generation it's revealed (eventually) that Q put humanity on trial because his fellow Q's ordered him to do so. The TARDIS rematialises on the space station comes right at the very moment Clara chooses to hit the green button and stop the nuclear countdown. Interesting to posit that the Doctor took the TARDIS into the vortex and waited, watching, to see what Clara would do.
The whole thing smack of a test. Would the Doctor test humanity and find us wanting? Yes. Does he have faith in the individual over the collective community? Given Clara's choice I assume so. Plus it would be hypocritical of him in the extreme to think otherwise given that he himself is considered the rebel who left Gallifrey and ran away, across the universe and all known time.
Should Clara have been so shocked, and disappointed, to have been tested? It is more than possible that here, for the first time Clara didn't feel the Doctor had her back. That unlike in Deep Breath she stretched out her hand and no other hand reached forward to clasp her fingers. It is, of course, symbolism for growing up. Adults have to make terrible, difficult, life-threatening or life-altering decisions. And sometimes they have to make them alone. Green for life. And for go. Clara orders the Doctor - back into his lonely TARDIS and out of her life. And, yet, I can't shake the sense that he is purposefully pushing her away. That there's something more here than Clara being the book he drops on the steps of the TARDIS console room, in much the same way that he left cyber-ghost of his wife on a shelf in a library. Why? Well, I can't remember a time when his telepathic skills were so enhanced. Not in Nu-Who. In Classic Who, during Tom Baker's run, there were references to the Matrix If Gallifrey has been saved, and the Matrix saved along with it, then the Doctor could be in communication with - or be influenced by - anyone.
Guesswork and theories aside, Clara's seen the Doctor's entire time-line, and thus is the person who knows him best. She knows his lesser and best qualities. And, magical mystery tours through time ad space to see fish-people aside, she is obviously moving on and choosing a planet-locked, ordinary, domestic life. This, if Rupert Pink doesn't have a more complicated, layered, or interesting character arc soon to unfold.
In Kill the Moon we're reminded that extra-ordinary live sometimes take a large toll. Captain Lundvik followed her dream, and became an astronaut not a mother. We don't know if she's married, but I assume from her leading a suicide mission that she's not. Dreams, can sometimes have a very high price. And travelling with the Doctor is a dream. I can't remember the last companion whose journey with the Doctor ended well, though both Martha and Sarah Jane seem to have walked away with more positive than nightmarish memories. No one seems to live happily ever after, after travelling with in the TARDIS.
Steven Moffat wanted Doctor Who to have more overt fairy tale elements interwoven with sci-fi fantasy. Most people seem to think this meant leaning towards the sanitised childhood tales made popular in Victorian times. But, the original fairy-tales were a darker and more adult. Tales as much warning as entertainment. And that is fitting.
Spiders aside, I liked this episode. Peter Capaldi's acting was exquisite, pacing was good. The main guest star excellent. I could have done with more plot and less moral dilemmas.
And, look, it's nearly Saturday once more.