fbpx
Doctor WhoTV

Doctor Who: Kill The Moon by Peter Harness (Doctor Who review).

Be careful: There may be some unintentional spoilers although I won’t give away the ending.

The first of three new writers to ‘Doctor Who’ this season and a proper story with a beginning, middle and end. The latter in more ways than one although we’ll have to see next week’s credits to see if it is the end for one particular person.

Does two trips in the TARDIS make Courtney Woods a companion or just a visitor? Whatever, the Doctor whisks her and Clara to the Moon, except they arrive on a space shuttle about to crash-land there in 2049 and a nexus point of the future. Considering all the times the Doctor has travelled into the future, you would have thought that he might have visited this crucial point already or at least known he shouldn’t be there. With time, things always have their place.

I was a bit concerned about an Earth orbit space shuttle getting to the Moon but as it was considered a one-way trip it looks like scriptwriter Peter Harness took that into account until I started digging beneath the surface.

DWKillTheMoon-1

Still a little concerned about where the additional mass came from though because it violates the Law of the Conservation of Matter. Even harbouring a life-form, it can only use the mass available to it not grow 1.3 billion tons out of nowhere. That amount of mass on the Moon would have messed up the Earth’s tides far more than allowing the population to play with their light switches and only half the population of the Earth make a decision. Blowing up the Moon is also the worse option because all that added mass would be attracted to the Earth doing what they shouldn’t be doing.

The spider germs seemed a bit superfluous and arachnophobia amongst you are going to checking in the corners of your house for the night. Get some conkers in to keep them at bay.

The Doctor gives an interesting philosophy of the grey spots in reality that he cannot interfere with. This is actually the second of these we’ve encountered. The other has the Ponds trapped there. No doubt we’ll see more in the future…or past. Considering that Clara is the Impossible Girl, you would have thought she would have known about such things.

It’s a shame that with the Earth facing destruction, Courtney becomes bored. Such is the youth of today although without it, the Doctor would be far from his TARDIS.

DWKillTheMoon-3

You can see where the budget went this time when they went to the Moon of Lanzarote but it made good use for the story.

Peter Capaldi looks oddly younger in this story and certainly more comfortable. Hermione Norris is credible but it’s a shame that her fellow astronauts barely get any screen time. Jenna Coleman has the most emotional scenes and probably the only companion never to be grateful to the Doctor. It’s a shame that Courtney Woods didn’t have her actress Ellis George’s vitality.

DWKillTheMoon-2

Finding the errors in this story only tended to come out when I started pondering on some of the things displayed. Oddly, all of these problems could have been sorted out with the input of a scientific advisor or someone with a little science knowledge. The art of Science Fiction is to merge reality with a little fudging not big blocks of it with wrappers on. You’d used to expect to get some real science even in ‘Doctor Who’ so could do better.

Geoff Willmetts

October 2014

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

2 thoughts on “Doctor Who: Kill The Moon by Peter Harness (Doctor Who review).

  • …er… where is my reply / comment to this? I can see “Comments (1)” above, which is presumably me, but no link to actually read it…

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.