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| A mystery on the moon... |
1 episode. Approx. 47 minutes. Written by: Peter Harness. Directed by: Paul Wilmshurst. Produced by: Peter Bennett.
THE PLOT
Clara advises the Doctor that he hurt the feelings of troubled student Courtney Woods (Ellis George) when he told her that she wasn't special after she threw up inside his TARDIS. All Clara wants is for the Doctor to apologize... But he overcompensates wildly by instead taking Courtney and Clara on a trip to the moon.
They materialize inside a space shuttle in the year 2049. The shuttle is an antique, salvaged by astronauts Ludvik (Herimone Norris) and Duke (Tony Osoba), in response to a lunar emergency. A Mexican survey station stopped transmitting several years earlier - And then the moon began "putting on weight," resulting in natural disasters on Earth.
The time travelers join the astronauts in exploring the site. The team there is dead, their corpses hanging in cocoons. It isn't long before their killers appear: gigantic spider-like creatures the Doctor identifies as germs. That's when the Doctor starts to realize that if these are germs, then they must be part of an even larger biological system. Something immense is alive at the center of the moon, and the only hope for the Earth may be to kill it... A choice which could itself prove devastating.
As Clara, Courtney, and Ludvik argue the best course of action, the Doctor does the most shocking thing he's ever done: He announces that he can play no part in this decision. He hops into the TARDIS and dematerializes, leaving the frightened humans to make their own choice, for good or ill!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: When Clara suggests they simply leave, as they know the moon will be saved because of visits farther in the future than this one, the Doctor replies that he can't just assume that. This moment is the opposite of a "fixed point." It's a moment that he describes as "fuzzy" and "gray." He doesn't know what ends up happening to the moon, because "it hasn't been decided yet." He does know that the decision made at this moment will be a major turning point for humanity - And for that reason, he decides that it's humanity's choice to make.
Clara: When the Doctor withdraws, Clara is left to carry the weight of the choice before her. She debates with Ludvik over the consequences of there being no moon (somehow, the astronaut doesn't correct the ludicrous assertion that the only consequence would be "no tides"), then tries to appeal to democratic principles by transmitting to Earth and asking for a vote. Finally, however, the decision comes down to her, and is made in a split second - with her having no idea whether what she's just done is wrong or right until the Doctor returns to tell them all what happens as a result.
THE DOCTOR WITHDRAWS
"There are moments in every civilization's history in which the whole path of that civilization is decided - The whole future path. Whatever future humanity might have depends upon the choice that is made right here and right now. Now, you've got the tools to kill it. You made them. You brought them up here all on your own, with your own ingenuity. You don't need a Time Lord. Kill it. Or let it live. I can't make this decision for you."
-The Doctor, leaving humanity to its own devices
The best and, I suspect, most talked-about scene in this episode is the final Doctor/Clara scene. Alone in the TARDIS, she tears into him for leaving them to make that decision alone. She demands to know exactly what he knew, angry and hurt at what she sees as a betrayal by a man she trusted completely. Jenna Coleman is so good in this scene that it's actually painful to watch how much she is hurting, and at the same time how much it hurts the Doctor to have so bungled the human part of his decision as to leave her in this state.
It's a searing moment. All the moreso because there is plenty of room to debate (Clara's hurt feelings aside) whether the Doctor leaving this choice to humanity was the right choice or the wrong one.
However, I would like to posit one possibility regarding his withdrawal. He says, when Clara confronts him, that he did it because he trusted her to make the right decision. What if it goes further than that? What if he withdraws because, in a situation in which he cannot see the right decision, he actually trusts her more than he trusts himself?
We have seen multiple times that this Doctor has no problem making cold, pragmatic choices. In this very episode, he takes advantage of one man's death as the moment in which the others can escape. "I'm so, so sorry" has been replaced by, "He was dead already; I was saving us!"
Clara screams her anguish that she almost made the wrong choice - But what if he believes he would have made the wrong choice? That would put a very different spin on his actions - And while I'm not saying that's the intent here, I do think it's a reasonable bit of speculation.
WEIRD SCIENCE (OR JUST PLAIN BAD)
My biggest problem with this episode - one that keeps me from rating it as highly as I otherwise might - is the bald-faced jettisoning of known facts about the moon. "The moon is an egg" flies in the face of multiple moon landings (which weren't just to take "giant leaps" and play golf, after all) and decades of analysis of samples brought back, not to mention centuries of astronomical observation. I'm not asking a Doctor Who episode to deliver an exhaustive science lecture. But in a series initially conceived as part educational, is it horribly wrong to at least not want it to deliberate contradict known facts?
All that I personally would require to paper over this is a quick exchange in which Ludvik, or Clara, or even Courtney protests some of the things we know about the moon - Such as its composition being rock and not eggshell, or the existence of varied minerals - and for the Doctor to give some handwaved explanation to address the disconnect. We don't even get that. Just "the moon is an egg," and an assumption that we're willing to unplug our brains and go along with it.
In an episode that's very smart about character interactions, that really grates on me. Not even a 20-second exchange to cover the bad science - Just the assumption that the viewing audience won't care or won't notice, something which feels far more "cheap... pathetic... (and) patronizing" than anything in the Doctor's treatment of Clara.
FINAL THOUGHTS
However, I am giving the episode a positive review despite that. The bad science annoys me (a lot). But it doesn't obliterate how effectively the episode built suspense, or how very real the emotional fireworks play at the end.
The first part of the episode, as the characters investigate the moon and then try to survive the killer germs, is terrific. The suspense starts almost instantly, with the exploration of the dead landing site and the discovery of the corpses creating wonderful atmosphere. The spider-germs are well-realized and genuinely creepy, and the moment in which the Doctor finds an innumerable mass of them lurking beneath a crack in the surface is sublimely nightmarish.
Once the bad science is shunted to the side, the sequence in which humanity "votes" on the life or death of the Moon Creature is beautifully portrayed. Clara asks them to vote by either leaving their lights on (to vote to let it live) or turning their lights off (to vote to kill it). Little by little, we see the lights on the Earth's surface switch off, leaving an Earth as dark and forbidding as the moon Clara inhabits. Then she makes her choice, we get the aftermath, and then the episode's biggest fireworks explode as Clara excoriates the Doctor for his behavior.
Emotionally riveting, stunningly well-made. If I could fully get past the failure to even address the real science readily available about the moon, I would be very generous here. I can't quite turn off my brain enough to skip over that, but I still would rate this as an above-average episode:
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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