Warning: The following article may contain discussions that some readers may find upsetting. Reader’s discretion is advised.

Regularly I like to throw around the phrase, “‘X’ isn’t a bad episode,” and it is often my get out of jail free card for episodes that are often loved, but I have something more critical to say about it than others. “Kill the Moon” is a bad episode and should never have been produced and should never have been written. The fact the writer goes on to co-write an episode with one of my favorite Doctor speeches is the only thing saving him from further verbal crucifixion. At this moment in time, for this one episode, I don’t care where you stand on the issue, this entire episode did not do service to either argument.

Yes, it is the abortion episode of Doctor Who, and the fact I have just said this angers me to no end. I honestly don’t know how narrow-mindedly stupid you have to be to view “Kill the Moon,” the episode where the Moon is a hatching egg, and humanity’s last hope are two morally corrupt adults and a 15-year-old deciding whether or not to nuke “the baby,” as a great episode. I, like most people in a time when you are bombarded with polarizing questions, fall on one of the two sides of this, and I think it didn’t even do justice to my opposing views.

Typically the argument for something like this is, “Well, if you’ve angered both sides [of the political spectrum] then you must be doing something right.” No. I am angry that such a nuanced issue, a “hot button topic” as I would say if I were the President, is handled with all the care of the news cycle sensation of the Casey Anthony trials back in 2011. If you screw up writing something so badly that you have someone in 2022 stating: “no, my side didn’t get a good statement in, but neither did the other side,” you’ve probably screwed up somewhere.

The whole episode is an absolute failure. The horror of the spider from the dark side of the Moon (I didn’t know Bowie was part of Pink Floyd) isn’t that interesting. On top of that direction fails at keeping things interesting when your only option is black and white backgrounds for what is meant to be special, and no one stands out for their well-done performance. I did want to punt Hermione Norris’ Lundvik into the sun, but that was mostly due to how poorly she was written and the nature of the one-note Doctor Who antagonist. I’ve crafted more complex help signs in games with dead bodies than every character in Peter Harness’ only solo episode.

Was there not a cast of Americans that could be brought in? We’ve got a formerly-retired and refurbished NASA shuttle from the Space Transportation System program, one with the US flag plastered on it. It is not a hard job to find Americans, there are plenty of them. Given a majority of the debate for which this episode dances merrily around to nursery rhymes with, it would make more sense to put someone you’d expect to be in that bitter dispute over what is right and wrong, in a ham-fisted way. I’ve not even mentioned the nukes. If not that, then paint over the flag with something else.

The entire premise is based on two things, the Moon has gained mass and thus become a threat to people stupid enough to buy beach-front property in 2049, despite scientific evidence that points to global warming putting stupidity of that level at risk of drowning. The other thing is, something killed the mining crew that took Elon’s “to the Moon” tweet seriously and thought there might be BitCoin there. The thing that killed them happens to be space-spiders, or bacteria that formed to protect the egg (the Moon) from hostiles and just happened to look like mildly threatening Australian spiders.

Again, I stand on the side of one of these arguments that are turned almost one-dimensional, if they had been actual characters behind them, they might have even turned out one-dimensional. So when I say that Clara’s proposition that “it is a child, you don’t have the right to take that life away” is dumb, and Lundvik’s equally stupid argument of “it could give birth and threaten the Earth” doesn’t stand up, you’d expect someone to push forth and find a diplomatic decision between the two. You would if you were watching Doctor Who, but this wasn’t. Peter gets in his box and fucks off.

There is no Doctor to make arguments, no higher being doing the one thing Peter will later shout in a scene film in front of Obama’s then secretary of magic or something of another ridiculously named department, and no locking the two in the Black Archive while three Doctors wait for a complex yet fair solution. He just walks off and lets one yell about the threat without understanding what it is that is supposed to be the threat, the other yelling about it being a child before she then goes on to suggest killing kids in a later episode. Why? Because they’ll be orphans otherwise, and she doesn’t find that odd to say in front of two actual orphans.

Any other episode, any other topic, and I’d have said something to the effect of, “Well, its heart was in the right place, it was trying to tell a story.” However, this did no one any favors, and more importantly, didn’t have a heart driving it forward. “Kill The Moon” was not a Doctor Who episode. I’m willing to bet it was something else, and when it was needed for the show, it was cramming in all the set dressing but none of the proper elements of Doctor Who.

This wasn’t a Star Trek-style high-concept with a sneaky thematic analog that works with the show. It isn’t addressing an issue the same way “Let’s Kill Hitler” does, where the Doctor tells the crew of the Teselector: (paraphrasing) “he’s a horrible person, but that doesn’t give you the right to torture him. That only serves your desire to reflect that pain he’s caused.” Instead, the episode is used for nothing more than pedaling a divide in the horrible relationship between the Doctor and Clara. Why? To undo some of the good from the last episode, and show that Danny is once again too good for all the nonsense Clara gets him caught up in.

It is a superficial episode that lacks depth, characters to latch on to, or exciting visual imagery. The horror spiders work as a horror element, but did the episode need it? We’re already carrying a heavy topic that wasn’t being tackled with deftness, with a purpose to be there, so adding in the horror jumpscares of robot/CGI spiders is adding about as much to Doctor Who as Nick Fletcher’s straw-clutching adds to your life. It simply doesn’t.

Overall, it was a dull episode trying to shoehorn in needless divides between characters that are supposedly friends in the first place, but they simply don’t have enough chemistry on-screen. Much like Jodie and her companions, Peter and Jenna’s chemistry is most well-realized through interviews and extracurricular portions of the show that aren’t on-screen. “Kill the Moon” didn’t give anyone to sympathize with. No one was built to shoulder the burden adeptly, and if they weren’t already on the Moon, I’d have punted them there in the first place. You have to quarantine stupidity, it seems to be spreading.

If there was one thing that stood out to be held aloft, it has to be Hermione Norris’ performance perfectly encapsulating someone I want to dropkick into the sun. Maybe it was poor writing helping her along that path, but her performance didn’t help endear Lundvik’s case either. The trouble there is, everyone aside from Disruptive Influence is equally aggravating and unlikeable from the outset. Making the entire episode a slog to get through, held together with a collection of spit and hair, collapsing once you apply any amount of pressure to the notions put forth or the story being told.

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Doctor Who "Kill The Moon"

0.5

Score

0.5/10

Pros

• Disruptive Influence.

Cons

• It is THAT episode.
• The Doctor just sodding off.
• Dull, in every single way.
• Neither argument was well constructed/represented.