Kill the Moon
Oct. 6th, 2014 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcWell. That was certainly a thing that happened.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm the last person to complain that a Doctor Who story is ridiculous. On the other hand, that was ridiculous.
And it doesn't seem to know it's ridiculous, which is the problem. It wants to be the Big Serious Story About Issues, and is completely unaware its central premise is nonsense on stilts.
(Compare with, for example, "Robot of Sherwood", which very much owns the fact it's completely ridiculous. And IMO "Alien ship lands in Nottingham and the Sheriff uses it against Robin Hood" is less ridiculous than "The moon is a giant egg".)
I enjoyed bits of it: the spider-things were neat (until we got their origin, obviously a giant egg would be covered in giant microbes, that's just logic, right?); Courtney is growing on me (and I loved the Tumblr gag); and the final scene was pretty powerful (although, again, it would have had more weight if Clara wasn't reacting to a story that was complete bobbins). But overall, meh.
ETA: Oh, one other thing I liked: the idea that important events are actually unfixed points in time. Which makes more sense for a series about a proactive time traveller.
Next week: An episode that does know it's ridiculous. I'll probably enjoy that.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm the last person to complain that a Doctor Who story is ridiculous. On the other hand, that was ridiculous.
And it doesn't seem to know it's ridiculous, which is the problem. It wants to be the Big Serious Story About Issues, and is completely unaware its central premise is nonsense on stilts.
(Compare with, for example, "Robot of Sherwood", which very much owns the fact it's completely ridiculous. And IMO "Alien ship lands in Nottingham and the Sheriff uses it against Robin Hood" is less ridiculous than "The moon is a giant egg".)
I enjoyed bits of it: the spider-things were neat (until we got their origin, obviously a giant egg would be covered in giant microbes, that's just logic, right?); Courtney is growing on me (and I loved the Tumblr gag); and the final scene was pretty powerful (although, again, it would have had more weight if Clara wasn't reacting to a story that was complete bobbins). But overall, meh.
ETA: Oh, one other thing I liked: the idea that important events are actually unfixed points in time. Which makes more sense for a series about a proactive time traveller.
Next week: An episode that does know it's ridiculous. I'll probably enjoy that.
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Date: 2014-10-07 10:26 am (UTC)Yes! That's it exactly! I was trying to work out in my head why the absolute lack of any shred of scientific believability bothers me more in this story than in so many others that are completely lacking in logic and sense and I think you've nailed it there. It's the po-facedness of it.
And the recycling - I mean Who has been going on so long that you have to forgive it for doing some things repeatedly, but this story seemed to be at least 60% composed of scraps of recent stories sewn together in a patchwork quilt. Even the astronaut woman seemed like a pale clone of the one from Waters of Mars....
I'm getting quite cross on behalf of Peter Capaldi, because he could be so bloody brilliant but they're giving him this sort of unmitigated crap to work with. That he's as good as he is is tribute to him and no credit to the script, methinks.