‘Doctor Who: 8×07 – Kill The Moon’ Review
Oh Doctor Who, using big words and gibberish to make us believe we have been entertained and what we are seeing is not silly at all. With an episode titled Kill the Moon, I did wonder where the imagination had gone from naming episodes, but that won’t stop me from watching it. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this week’s episode though is the fact that it is mostly about questions and decisions, but where they worth answering?
When Clara (Jenna Coleman) angrily tells The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) to apologise to Courtney (Ellis George) the girl we saw in last week’s episode form a friendship with him for telling her she’s not special, he does one better by taking her on a trip to the moon. Soon caught in an investigation into strange happenings and spiders, they find themselves caught in a moral decision that could have big repercussions for not only the Moon but Earth too.
Kill the Moon is another episode that seems to walk the tightrope, and this time it was shaking a little too much to be balanced correctly. I admit that I liked it, but at times it did feel like I was more interested in the idea and not the actual execution of the episode itself. There are moral decisions involved and it’s interesting the stance that The Doctor took (which I can’t really get into without spoilers), but again this is another episode where the conclusion was way more important than what actually happened in the episode. On the question of Danny Pink though, after the good work done last week Samuel Anderson’s character appears to have found his place in the world of Clara and The Doctor and actually worked as the one person talking some sense in a particularly emotional situation.
This episode was also interesting because it finally looked at The Doctor and his insistence on running away and leaving Clara in danger. There is a confrontation where Clara finally loses it with him and I did feel that Jenna Coleman not only performed the speech excellently but she also put into words something that has bugged the viewers, or at least me about the way he has acted. It will be interesting to see where this goes next week, which looks very interesting as we get to the Orient Express episode which appears to have a Mummy problem.
One thing this episode did that did push the wrong buttons for me was a move to be too self-knowing, a few comments were made that may make fans smile but also raise questions as to mocking the nature of images on the internet and requests by the makers of the show in the past of not showing videos and images that have leaked. There is always a danger of making too many jokes like this and losing sight on the importance of the story itself but I doubt that will happen here. We want Doctor Who, not Scream.
Kill the Moon is an episode that could have been better but it is far from the worst we’ve seen. Capaldi makes for an interesting Doctor and it is hard to fault his performance, even if this is not a version of Doctor Who that we are normally happy with. I would say this is an episode that may be important to the relationship between Clara and The Doctor, and maybe too much focus yet again were on the final scenes which left the rest of the episode lacking slightly for me but I can fully understand a lot of fans loving it. The fact it keeps you excited for next week’s episode shows that most importantly it does some things right.
**** 4/5
Kill The Moon feels like a step in the right direction for the story of The Doctor and Clara but there are still some things that don’t hit the mark for me, but everything can’t be perfect.
