By: Peter Harness
**Spoilers**
If you have not yet seen this episode, (
....dear LORD was that bad!
I will confess that I am rather late in getting this review out. I dropped the ball. I didn't do it last week. There is a reason for that, though, and the reason is that I spent quite a bit of time post-episode sulking about and raging about how horrible it was (poor Leslie had to listen to me rant during one of my re-watches) and it took me quite a bit of griping and trashed review ideas to calm down. Because this episode was beyond bad and well into the realms of horrendous. I haven't seen a Doctor Who episode this bad since...well...since Series 7.
So I watched the episode last Saturday and I thought it was terrible. I re-watched it again a couple of days later and I loathed it. I saw it one more time in order to take notes for this review and I still think it's awful. Needless to say, this review isn't even going to bother with 'Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts' because that section would be full of me ranting and raving and I'm quite sure that none of you want to listen to that. So, instead, I am just going to list off the coherent notes I took and discuss them below.Notes & Discussion:
- This episode totally ripped off the story lines of The Waters of Mars and 42 and yet STILL managed to be terrible!
In many ways this episode was a very standard base-under-siege story with a shallow, superficial moral dilemma stapled on to make people think it was being relevant and deep. It stole elements from two other base-under-siege stories that I actually really like and utterly failed to deliver them in a way that did it justice. A colony in space killed off by mysterious, alien intruders? A ticking-down clock in real time? A question of which lives to save? ALL ELEMENTS PRESENT IN THOSE EARLIER EPISODES AND DONE A BILLION TIMES BETTER!
- The Doctor told Courtney she wasn't important? WHAT?!
Okay. So maybe I should clarify that I'm not the sort of person who believes that The Doctor should be all hugs and sunshine and kittens all the time. Heavens no! I get annoyed whenever they try to push him as such a character. But I also take exception with the writers just blindly pushing him in the opposite direction. Like the fact that The Doctor is not attracted to Clara so, in every episode, he must make a derogatory comment about her appearance because, to Moffat, the only reason you can be regarded as a person instead of a sex symbol is if your partner/friend doesn't find you beautiful. WHAT?!
*takes deep breath and puts on 'Stairway to Heaven'*
I'm good. I'm cool. I'm just upset about this little development because, oh I don't know, IT GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING THE DOCTOR HAS BEEN BUILT UP TO BE OVER THE SEASONS OF THE REVIVED SHOW. And, yeah yeah, he changes with every regeneration, blah, blah, blah...I get that. What I don't get is their stripping of him of the thread of decency that he has carried THROUGH SEVERAL REGENERATIONS NOW just for the sake of shoe-horning in a dreadfully stereotypical character for a bit of cheap tension and a few dumb laughs for tumblr. to gif to death. So, if he's a total narcissist who doesn't think anyone is important unless they're some kind of mystery (which, actually, is a rather interesting reference to Mr. Moffat himself) then what do you make of these moments:
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Remember the last person The Doctor made the mistake of casually, half-jokingly saying wasn't especially important?
Now I am not a Courtney fan (more on that later) nor do I expect a show about time being re-written that has lasted more than 50 years to have perfect continuity...but I expect the continuity of the character-development to be kept. The Doctor learned his lesson with Donna and I expect it to stick a bit. Besides...even Doctor Six at his worst never said directly that anyone wasn't important. COME ON!
This isn't Star Trek TOS and even there the redshirts had more of a personality than these poor, pathetic pieces of unused tissue!
- Oh Courtney...I think I'm going to hate you. (Later) Yes. Yes I definitely do.
No disrespect to the actress, who I'm sure is doing the best she can with what she was given, but I just want to shake this brat until her teeth rattle. Really I do. Courtney is a textbook example of HOW NOT TO WRITE CHILDREN and is unbelievable both in her capabilities and her inconsistency. She either acts way too young for her age or is something that I'm pretty sure is supposed to be a caricature of a whiny, stupid, utterly vapid teenager. One minute she's whimpering that she wants to go home and is scared and then the next she is complaining about the lack of wi-fi? Seriously? Even Veruca Salt would be wrinkling her nose in disdain at that kind of behavior! It's not realistic at all and leaves me questioning as to whether the writer has ever actually interacted with real children or teenagers at all.- WHY DID THE DOCTOR TAKE COURTNEY WITH HIM? WHY?
Really...why? Even if I liked Courtney (which I decidedly DO NOT) I would be scratching my head in bewilderment at this choice. She added nothing to the story whatsoever and could have been replaced with a cuckoo clock without anyone noticing the difference.
- What exactly was the point of the spider-germ things?
Seriously. They weren't the things hatching from the 'alien egg', so why were they even there? Just to kill off some redshirts and to create some false tension? Bah! I doubt even an arachnophobe would have had an adrenaline rush from those things! (They also make a sound that is rather like a Nazgul with a clogged nose.)
- Oh yeah; this episode also ripped off the bland Silurian episode from Series 5. Y'know...the two-parter so dull that I literally only remember Rory's heroic sacrifice and not the titles?
The two-parter did it better, just saying. At least it was just forgettable instead of actively bad.
Yes. So, needless to say, I was less than impressed with Kill The Moon. The only good thing about it was the always-wonderful performances from Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman and the fact that, for this show, the special effects looked quite good. It was dull, uninspired, and downright offensively awful in places. Courtney grates, the other characters were utterly forgettable (seriously...I have no idea who any of them were even after four views of the episode), and it was an episode that stubbornly refused to grow on me and only became more and more terrible every time I watched it again. 0/5
What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?
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