·
Well, here’s a nice, non divisive episode that
everyone agrees on. Ahem. I’m very much in the “I love Kill the Moon” crowd:
it’s daring, has a great core of strong character work running through the
centre of the story, and is not afraid to be different, which is really all I
want from my Doctor Who.
·
So, let’s acknowledge the most controversial
aspect of the episode: the elevator pitch “The Moon’s an egg”. It’s utterly
bonkers, and I love it. I mean, I struggle to find a measure by which this is
“too silly” but “a police box that is bigger on the inside and travels through
time and space” is reasonable enough, and frankly, it’s sold for me by the
sheer glee in Capaldi’s voice when he delivers the line for the first time.
There’s a more reasonable critique than “it’s too silly”, namely that the
episode doesn’t show any consequences to the hatching of the moon: nothing
happens to the Earth as a result of letting the moon dragon live, and it
hatches an egg immediately. Which, fair enough, if you feel that way, it’s
valid. Personally, I’m fine with Space dragons having unusual biology –
ordinary science is clearly not a major concern of the episode – we’re dealing
with the mythic here, not hard sci-fi. The point of the moon dragon is that
it’s something unknown, and unknowable: we get several stories in season eight
where the monster is shown to be beyond human understanding – “Listen”, “Kill
the Moon”, and “Flatline” all address the idea that sometimes there are things
we can’t understand, and can only react to with wonder or terror. And there are
consequences to this story, in the form of Clara and the Doctor’s fallout:
again, I personally find the emotional consequences of a relationship being
strained to breaking point are far more interesting to explore than the
consequences of a made up Sci-fi event.
·
And let’s address the other elephant in the
room: from the moment Courtney says "It's just a little baby"
(arguably sooner), it's hard to avoid the abortion metaphor reading, but it's
also hard to call it a straightforward allegory - the dilemma is far closer to
the one in "The Beast Below"* than as a pro life/ pro choice debate.
It's not easy to read the episode as pro choice or pro life with any certainty,
as the metaphors are so muddled - there's no literal mother figure having to
choose between her bodily autonomy and a potential life (Although as has been
pointed out, Clara, Courtney, and Lundvik could metaphorically fulfil that
role, as, in a way, can the people of Earth). And the moon dragon is on the
point of being born - while emergency late term abortions are a thing, they
don't seem to be a focus of the pro choice/ pro life debate (which centres more
on whether life begins at the point of conception, or a later stage in
pregnancy). Which is why I believe Peter Harness when he says he didn't intend
the episode to be an abortion allegory, although he's right to acknowledge the
reading is there in spite of intent (and clearly can produce some interesting
readings).
*which was pretty much a trolley problem,
with much the same solution - a reveal that it wasn't a choice between humanity
and the alien, because the choice was always false - the difference is that
Clara makes the choice to let the moon dragon live without knowing what will
happen, whereas Amy figures out that the Star Whale isn't going to fly off and
let humanity die by making the connection between it and the Doctor.
·
The episode turns, of course, on the Doctor
leaving: an alarming but brilliant moment that changes the nature of the story
just as much as the Doctor’s declaration that the moon’s an egg – it’s no
longer a Hinchliffe aping horror story, but a moral dilemma based around a
premise that could be drawn from a greek myth, which the companion has to solve
unassisted. The Doctor leaving is flagged up from the first scene, with Clara’s
video, but the episode plays with the audience’s expectations with the Doctor’s
descent into a crater after he finds amniotic fluid on the moon, leading the
audience to assume the Doctor and Clara will be separated due to both being
trapped in different deadly situations, such as in “The Satan Pit”, only for
the Doctor to reunite with Clara and leave of his own volition, a moment that
becomes a natural culmination of the spikiness the Twelfth Doctor has shown so
far.
·
This leads to the incredible satisfaction of seeing
this episode passing the Bechdel test with ease: the climax of the episode
being driven entirely by three women, each with different personalities and
perspectives, who mostly discuss the moral issue at the heart of the story.
It’s a moment where you feel Doctor Who taking a genuine and measurable step
forward in being that bit more forward thinking.
·
This section of the episode also gives us Clara
having a Troughton-like moment, speaking out of a camera. The line “45 minutes
to decide” is a blatant reference to the episode’s length, making it clear that
this is a moment of metatextuality, with Clara breaking the fourth wall,
directly addressing the the audience, who would have been watching the episode
on a dark autumn night. As a result, the viewer is asked to make a choice:
leave their lights on to save the Moon, turn them off to kill the moon. That’s
a genuinely inspired piece of writing. Also interesting is the way the lights
are turned off: in huge, country sized chunks at a time, suggesting the world
governments are turning off the grids, not giving the people a chance to vote
to save the moon dragon. It’s just a potential subtext, but it’s there, a
tantalizing ambiguity that holds a real potency in the episode.
·
And then we come to the fallout of the episode,
the Doctor and Clara’s argument. It’s brilliantly done, genuinely organic for
both characters in terms of where their development has been going this season,
and in the way it is built into the episode, neither’s actions seem cartoonish
or out of character, and you are able to empathise with both of them in the
clash, although I think Clara’s definitely in the right here, and am surprised
just how many people claim she’s being unreasonable here. Nonetheless, the
Doctor does make some good points throughout the conflict that grows between
him and Clara throughout the episode. The argument some fans make about the
Doctor being right to say Courtney is “nothing special” seems inconsistent with
the fan consensus that the tenth Doctor is wrong to say the exact same thing to
Donna in “The Runaway Bride”. But the Doctor is right to want to let Courtney
prove herself: Clara is looking for the easy way out, trying to tell Courtney
that she’s special, to find the quick way to make Courtney’s upset feelings go
away. Instead the Doctor shows Courtney that she is, that she can be special
and do special things. However, when it comes to the points that involve basic
tact, Clara’s argument holds more weight: her key quotes being “that was you,
my friend, making me scared”, and “you walk our earth, you breathe our air” –
solid logic, the Doctor makes himself involved, it’s actually pretty rich of
him to arbitrarily decide things aren’t his business, especially since Earth
has become his adopted planet after he ran from Gallifrey, and even more so
since its (recently reversed) destruction in the Time War. And speaking of the
Time War, Clara didn’t abandon the Doctor when he had to make a decision
concerning the survival of his species: instead, she stayed and supported him,
whereas here he leaves her in the same situation, but abandoned and scared, not
knowing what to do. But perhaps the most weight comes from Clara’s angry “don’t
tell me to take the stabilisers off”: this is actually what the Doctor says to
her, and she rightly feels hurt and patronized by this: she’s saved him enough
times on their adventures to not need to be compared to a child learning to
ride a bike. The Doctor sees his actions as respecting her, trusting her to
make the right choice, and I think he genuinely does believe that she will make
the right choice, but his words, the way he treats Clara in leaving the
decision to her, have the exact opposite implication. However, there is a
slightly unnerving note to her response to the Doctor: “don’t lump me in with
all the other tiny humans” she says, a hint that she possibly thinks she’s
worth more than ordinary people. There’s just a hint of arrogance showing
through in Clara’s language here: a flaw she generally keeps carefully hidden,
but will emerge, for good and bad, over the remainder of her arc.
·
However, and this is an important note to
remember ahead of the next episode, Clara goes to Danny having been pushed too
far. It’s a brilliant reversal of expectations, as Danny’s line in “The
Caretaker” that seemed to have been a seed for much later in the season instead
becomes relevant the very next episode. More importantly, it provides some
important context for Clara and the Doctor’s argument: Danny says that Clara
clearly isn’t done with the Doctor: for all people cite this as one of Clara’s
many departures from the show (I think she has three that are sincerely played
as departures, each one because Jenna Coleman was considering leaving, but was
eventually persuaded to stay for the ending Steven Moffat always wanted to do),
the show is quite explicit about the fact that she isn’t going anywhere.
·
This is a point hammered home by the final
scene: the episode ends not on Clara’s anger at the Doctor, but her
contemplation, looking at the moon, still yet to hatch, out of her apartment
window. This is a potent symbol: the moon has yet to shatter and break apart in
linear time, but already has done for Clara, and the same can be said for her
relationship with the Doctor. As a result, the image of Clara watching the moon
gives an insight into her thought process: she has a unique perspective,
outside and inside the events of the episode, from which to consider what
caused her fallout with the Doctor, and how she wants to respond. We’re not
left thinking Clara is gone forever, but wondering what she will do next.
No comments:
Post a Comment