ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
After a really poor story, I was hoping for something
better. Kill the Moon IS better, but not by much and its overall premise is
really silly – the Moon is an egg. Really? An egg? It’s very hard to get beyond
that central plot point which makes the whole story just feel daft.
The Doctor takes Clara and Courtney (Ellis George) to the
Moon in 2049, they land on a space shuttle on a suicide mission to destroy the
Moon which has been growing in size and wrecking the Earth’s tidal systems.
Once on the Moon the Doctor discovers the crew of a base dead and wrapped in
webs. The Moon is starting to break apart and red spider-like creatures are
emerging from the cracks and killing everything they can find. They pursue the
Doctor and crew who shelter in the base. The Doctor discovers amniotic fluid leaking
from one of the breaks in the Moon’s surface and deduces that the Moon is – and
always was – an egg and the spider creatures are merely some form of parasite
living on it.
He then leaves Clara, Courtney and the shuttle’s commander
Lundvik (Hermione Norris) to decide on the fate of the Moon. Lundvik wants to
destroy it, scared of what might hatch from the egg. Clara is not so certain.
They argue and decide to let the people of Earth decide. They send a message to
Earth telling people to keep their lights on if the Moon-Egg is to be allowed
to hatch, and to switch them off if it is to be destroyed. The lights on Earth
start going off.
At the very last moment Clara decides not to destroy the
Moon-Egg and then the Doctor reappears and rescues them, allowing the Egg to
hatch, a creature to emerge which then lays a new Moon-Egg before departing
into space.
On Earth Clara is furious with the Doctor who tells her that
sometimes neither choice is a good one, but she insists she doesn’t want to see
him again and departs to find Danny. Courtney is also deposited back at home.
At the time of broadcast critics heaped masses of praise on
this story, but I just can’t see why. Sure the spider-creatures are really
scary and both Capaldi and Coleman are very good, especially at the end when
they argue and decide to split up. I don’t think that is enough to save this
story though.
Try as I might I just can’t get beyond the overall silly
idea of the Moon as an Egg. Even all these years later you find yourself saying
“An Egg? Are you sure?” and hoping that it’s not really going to turn out to be
so. Plus, why does the Doctor treat Clara so horribly here? It makes no sense
at all for him to force her to make such a terrible decision just to make a
point. Okay, Clara comes through, but what if she had just gone “Nah, blow it
up”? Plus, he does all this in front of a troubled teenager in the shape of
Courtney. I know the Capaldi Doctor is supposed to be a bit tough and
uncompromising but even Colin Baker’s Doctor would hesitate to treat his
companion this badly … and he tried to strangle her!
So I find it very hard to like Kill the Moon, and by this
point in Peter Capaldi’s first season I do find myself missing Matt Smith’s
lovable, clown like Doctor and wondering why the decision seems to have been
made to make this Doctor so unlikable.
NEXT UP: MUMMY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
© Text copyright - Raving Loony
Productions and
Andrew J. Müller,
Roy Barton
and Shaun Runham
© Photos and Artwork - Andrew J. Müller
© Web Design and Layout - Andrew J. Müller
2022
