By Will Barber – Taylor

In the near future, the Doctor and Clara find themselves on a space shuttle making a suicide mission to the Moon. Crash-landing on the lunar surface, they find a mining base full of corpses, vicious spider-like creatures poised to attack, and a terrible dilemma. When Clara turns to the Doctor for help, she gets the shock of her life.

Kill The Moon is a story about a choice, a choice that needs to be taken or all of humanity will be doomed. Unfortunately, this choice is completely undermined by the ending of the story.

The first twenty minutes or so of Kill The Moon are extremely story filled. From the first scene in which The Doctor picks Clara and Courtney up until The Doctor’s revelation about what is actually going on there is a great sense of tension and drama within the story. Echoing Alien and other sc-fi films like it, we see The Doctor and co stumble through the undeniably creepy atmosphere. The fact most of the opening scenes are shot in the dark adds to the creepy nature of the scene. The half lighting creates the feeling of panic among the characters and among the audience at large, feeding into the sense that something is waiting in the dark, ready to pounce.

The real problem with Kill The Moon is the ending. It is an ending which is flawed not just because of the ridiculousness of it, but also because it completely destroys any hope of credibility the episode has.

Kill The Moon is built up as a survival story: Earth verses whatever threat is causing the Moon to send major tidal waves across the planet. Think about this for a second. The moon is causing massive tidal waves to hit the planet. This is a major threat to humanity. So what happens when The Doctor reveals that the Moon is a massive Egg?

An egg. How on earth would an egg be able to keep warm in the vacuum of space? How did this egg get here? Did it take so long to hatch because of human interference or is that just natural to the magic dragon thing that burst out of the egg at the end?

This moon egg has supposedly been causing major natural disasters on Earth yet when it vanishes from the sky nothing happens. Nothing at all. Then, magically the creature lays a new egg and we have a new moon! Hey presto! I have no problem with science fantasy; most of Doctor Who is science fantasy. Yet Kill The Moon sets what is happening on the moon as a major threat, something which would wipe out humanity. Hitherto when the moon disappears from the sky and a new one is plonked in its place nothing happens. At all. Not a single repercussion. Taking science out of it, this whole episode has been built upon what would happen if the Moon was destroyed. However when this takes place there is no repercussions, none is really affected. The conclusion results in a feeling of anti-climax for the viewer.

Capaldi gives a great star turn in this episode, forcing humanity to make the choice as to whether to kill the moon or not. Capaldi plays devil’s advocate throughout and does this brilliantly, testing and taunting Clara to try and get her to figure it out for herself. It shows off The Doctor’s darker side, his more tricksterish side.

All in all, Kill The Moon is a decent enough story, well-paced for the first twenty minutes before sagging under the weight of an unpromising and insufficient conclusion.  While Kill The Moon is disappointing in its conclusion it is perfectly palpable for the first twenty minutes, which is more than can be said for Listen.

NEXT TIME

MUMMY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS