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This is an excellent episode with a top notch
story structure, dialogue, characterisation and a gorgeous look and feel,
showing just how confident the Capaldi era, now fully established, has become. The
first half of the season, sensibly, retained many elements of, and writers from
the Smith era, to see what new things the Capaldi era can bring to the mix.
With new writer Peter Harness, “Kill the Moon” saw the Capaldi era fully emerge
after its steady formation in the first half of the season. And so, in many
ways, this is the first “business as usual” monster story now that the Capaldi
era style has been fully settled, but in this case, business is usual is not a
bad thing, as it’s a really confident business as usual, with the show firing
on all cylinders, and sometimes, in this sort of moment, that’s something to be
appreciated.
·
Particularly notable are the Guest cast, who are
quite large but very well handled by the script: Moorehouse, Quail, Perkins,
Maisie, and also Gus and the Foretold are all distinct and memorable
characters, with beautifully weighted arcs and stories within the episode.
Moorehouse’s fascination with the Foretold turning to horror, Maisie and
Quail’s struggles with their trauma, and Perkins becoming a pseudo companion
before slowly becoming too unnerved by what he sees of the Doctor’s lifestyle
to want more of it, are all beautifully done arcs, and some of the best guest
character work in New Who.
·
The “66 seconds to live” premise is also inspired,
with the episode being beautifully structured around it: each death reveals a
little more about the monster and the mystery, while pushing the themes and
character arcs a little further forward. The image of the stopwatch also gives
the episode a distinctive visual style: visual innovation really is a matter of
fact for New Who at this point.
·
It’s also worth acknowledging the way the
Foretold contributes to the Motifs that have been developed throughout the
season. It is another soldier, wanting to finally end its war, interesting
paralleled to Quayle, who has reluctantly been dragged back into fighting to
rediscover the fight he lost in the war. It’s also revealed to be a Robot kept
alive for hundreds of years by its tech, on a seemingly endless journey to
reach its final destination, much like half face man, and to a lesser extent
the Robots of Sherwood and the Skovox Blitzer. This is all part of a thematic
build towards a finale centred around UNIT, Danny, the Cybermen, and the
afterlife: I really appreciate the thematic cohesion of this season.
·
However, the most room for discussion in this
episode comes from its character development for the Doctor and Clara, as
stellar work is done for both regulars, and for the delopment of the themes and
philosophy of the season. The opening picks up nicely from the ending of “Kill
the Moon”, not patronizing the audience by seeking to immediately explain why
Clara’s with the Doctor again, but giving us a good minute of them interacting
as they usually would at the start of an adventure, but with awkward pauses and
overdone politeness (“It’s the baggage cart. But thanks for lying”), so that
the audience start to put the pieces together as the Clara starts the “last
hurrah” discussion, while the Doctor continues to evade, visibly wanting the
awkward emotional stuff he struggles to understand out of the way as soon as
possible.
·
However, the episode is filled with hints that
Clara still wants to carry on travelling with the Doctor, the first being her
phone call with Danny, where Danny, while supporting her decision to leave, is
visibly unconvinced by her repeated assertions that this is definitely her last
trip in the TARDIS – to use the episode’s own metaphor, those are definitely
the words of an addict. Then, when the Doctor asks if Clara wants the trip
turning dangerous to “be a thing?” she denies it, just as she gets angry at the
Doctor when she realises he was actively pursuing a dangerous adventure while
claiming they were just going for a quiet trip, but she nonetheless sneaks out
right after he does to investigate herself. But perhaps the most explicit
acknowledgement that Clara isn’t ready to leave comes from Maisie, who responds
to Clara assertion that you can’t end a relationship on slammed door by saying
“Of course you can, people do it all the time. Except when they can’t”.
Maisie’s point of view is not simplistically true: Danny’s advice to Clara that
she process what she’s been through with the Doctor and try not to end on
acrimonious terms was clearly right for him when he went through a similar
experience with the army, but comes from a different perspective to Masie’s.
And the evidence of the episode would suggest that Maisie’s perspective is far
closer to Clara’s than Danny’s is.
·
However, her desire to stay is tempered by her
unease with the twelfth Doctor’s methods. This unease comes to a head when Clara
lies to Maisie for the Doctor, Claiming he can save Maisie when she believes
she is taking Maisie to her death. It’s a significant moment for Clara, in
which she accepts having to make the sacrifice the Doctor makes with Moorehouse
and Quail. Her anger upon realizing the Doctor knew this wouldn’t be a safe
“last hurrah” is also significant: as we noted earlier, there’s a clear sense
that Clara wouldn’t have minded this being a dangerous adventure: what she
minds is the Doctor lying to her, not treating her as an equal and letting her
know what he really wants.
·
However, this confrontation is turned on its
head when the Doctor takes Maisie’s place for a final confrontation with the
Foretold. There are two significant character beats for the twelfth Doctor
here: the smaller one being when Clara sees the teleporter that was keeping the
Foretold alive and asks “we were fighting that?”, to which the Doctor responds
“he was fighting it too”. The Doctor saves the day by empathising with the
plight of a soldier waiting for the order that will enable it to die (there’s
something of a Euthanasia metaphor there, which will come up again in the
finale), further highlighting the similarities between the Doctor and soldiers,
in spite of his discomfort with them. But most significantly, it marks the moment
the twelfth Doctor finally emerges as an unambiguous hero, putting himself on
the line to stop the monster right when it seems like he’s at his most brutally
cold so far. And it’s probably the one-minute deduction is a delightful piece
of writing, being one of the most satisfying resolutions in the New Series –
the episode makes a great deal out of how quickly the Doctor works, moving on
to the next task required to keep fighting, even in the wake of horrors that
require the other characters to pause and process their trauma, and it is this
rapidity that enables him to deduce the Foretold’s origins within a minute
(while being distracted by information from Maisie’s past).
·
Ultimately, the episode establishes the Twelfth
Doctor’s brand of heroism not by ignoring his darker side, but by throwing it
into sharper relief, and holding it in tension with his heroism. This is best
established by Clara and the the Doctor’s discussion on the Beach. Clara asks
the Doctor if he was “just pretending? To be Heartless?” and he responds by
saying “sometimes the only decisions you have are bad ones. You still have to
choose”. The Doctor’s “would it make it easier?” suggests that he feels he was
being heartless, but his definition of what he’s actually doing – continuing to
fight until he can stop the death, doesn’t read as simplistically “heartless”
either, in spite of his acknowledgement that he would have carried on as he did
with Quail and Moorehouse if he hadn’t found a way to save Maisie. He cares
enough to fight to save as many people as possible, but isn’t invested in
appearing heroic anymore: letting himself overtly care may result in the pain
he feels at the lives lost in his adventures overwhelm him, and make him unable
to keep saving lives.
·
The final scene sees Clara take on the Twelfth
Doctor’s morality as she has come to understand it, asking if he’s addicted to
making impossible choices just as it becomes clear that she is addicted to
TARDIS travel, lying to Danny and the Doctor about her decision to stay. I
don’t think Clara fully knows why she’s lying to Danny and the Doctor about her
reasons for staying on the TARDIS, but I suspect it’s because she loves making
the impossible choices that travel on the TARDIS requires of her: holding
humanity’s fate in her hands in “Kill the Moon”, and leading Maisie to her
apparent death here being the most recent examples. But she doesn’t want to admit
to loving that lifestyle, as it brings aspects of her personality she doesn’t
like to the open, and opening up to Danny and the Doctor would necessitate
being honest about those morally grey parts of her personality. Instead, she
demands that the Doctor “Shut up and show me some planets”, finally fully
accepting the twelfth Doctor, echoing his “can I talk about my planets now?”
from the start of the episode. In spite of their clashes, Clara and the Doctor
are incredibly similar in temperament and personality, for better and worse,
something that the final scene, which is both unnerving and exhilarating,
reflects.
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