Doctor Who's "Kill the Moon" Is a Mess of Pseudoscience
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Peter Capaldi, long-term Doctor Who fan and thoroughly excellent Doctor, and he finally gets to show himself off as the character and he's got fucking Moffat writing the episodes.shadowmagus said:
I feel so sorry for the poor guy. Moffat shouldn't be allowed near a damn typewriter, nevermind a cultural phenomenon. The dick.
It wasn't shown near the watershed for that reason. It was because strictly come dancing was on before it.V TheSystem V said:
My biggest problem with the pseudoscience was that the spiders were "single-celled organism", despite looking and behaving (size and cobwebs) like a complex multi-celled life form. Ugh a thing that size is not compatible with life if it is single-celled. And also what VThesSystem V said about laying an egg just after it hatched.
However, you could probably watch the last 15mins and get the whole premise of the episode i.e. blow up the egg or not? and would not miss out at all. I feel the last few scenes with Clara to be the best of the season so far.
This soooo much. I really have only liked Donna noble and sometimes Clara as companions, but this just seemed strange and unnecessary at the least and forced at the mostfaeshadow said:
Yes this soooo mush too. I don't even like the majority of his one-off episodes, they always seem disjointed. I am not even a fan of the weeping angels, I don't find them scary and the more rules they added for them the less scary they became. However I did enjoy "blink". I really miss Russel T Davies, he was brilliantly subtle with amazing attention to detail.Thyunda said:
Thing is, personally I'm fine with pseudo science stuff in Doctor Who. I always suspend my disbelief quite a bit when I watch an episode, and I can deal with timebombs and weird chambers that distort space and time, and weird alien cubes, impossible spaces and the like. It's part of the charmgigastar said:
But even if your show is about fantasy science, you still need to have at LEAST a bit of consistency, because otherwise all the tension goes away and it just feels ridiculous. When Kill the Moon ended I was just feeling cheated because it felt so much like a cop out (the magic space dragon litteraly craping out an egg JUST after he leaves, which JUST happens to be same size, in the last few minutes of the ep so that everything is convenient etc. That and just the flat out wrong stuff the doctor says and Courtney and Clara pretending to have any kind of knowledge on what would happen if the moon disappears).
You need to keep at least some level of minimal research, especially when it hits close to home like the moon and the earth. It's not even rocket science. This kind of stuff is learned EARLY in school. My nephew who's 10 knows about this stuff and he also was kinda shocked and baffled when they were talking about destroying the moon like it was not that big of a deal excepts for "Tides or whatever".
If anything, Dr Who episodes could only get better, not worse, if they did a little research. Constraints can improve creativty and give in for actual tension. Because if every writer starts to handwave any potential problem in doctor who with LITTERALY MAGIC (it's not even pseudo science at this point, it's flat out fantasy magic. It's full on deus ex machina), then there's no point in actually being worried watching an episode.
Kill the moon would've been way better, almost perfect if it did at least just a bit of that. If it at least tried to be believable instead of not just completely daft. It makes everyone look like an idiot too: Capaldi's doctor, Clara, Courtney, and mostly the writer. The only good/reasonable character during this ep who was consistent was female astronaut Lundvik who seemed like the only one who actually knew what was going on
Ya know, I enjoyed the episode for what it was, goofy over the top, but fun.
What I did not F**king enjoy?
That
Little
F**king
Brat
SERIOUSLY! Never once, have I felt in a Dr.Who episode since the 9th doctor that an episode would be better without something in particular.
She was just annoying, plain retarded and seemingly doesn't understand her situation much for a 15 year old.
>Oh I'm in a Tardis, a time machine and was told not to touch anything? Let me fiddle with buttons and UPLOAD PICS TO TWITTER (or whatever it was)
Then there's the...
>I'm nut st00pid
>Its a parasite
>ah w0t?
*facepalms*
Then the over used "s0 its laik a shiken" jokes that she makes constantly.
Also lets not forget the...
>doct0r im scared I wunna go bak
*gets taken back*
*10mins later*
>IM BOOOORED THERES NOTHING 2 DU HEAR
>DRRRR I WUNNA COME BAK PLZ
:l
In all seriousness, the episode in itself was great. That actor was not. It made me seriously think that this episode would have been a lot better without a child at all. I mean, even without the child they still would have stopped the bomb from going off, it's not like the child was of any use at all.
I hope to see less or NONE of her in future episodes, because that child to me feels braindead.
/endrant
What I did not F**king enjoy?
That
Little
F**king
Brat
SERIOUSLY! Never once, have I felt in a Dr.Who episode since the 9th doctor that an episode would be better without something in particular.
She was just annoying, plain retarded and seemingly doesn't understand her situation much for a 15 year old.
>Oh I'm in a Tardis, a time machine and was told not to touch anything? Let me fiddle with buttons and UPLOAD PICS TO TWITTER (or whatever it was)
Then there's the...
>I'm nut st00pid
>Its a parasite
>ah w0t?
*facepalms*
Then the over used "s0 its laik a shiken" jokes that she makes constantly.
Also lets not forget the...
>doct0r im scared I wunna go bak
*gets taken back*
*10mins later*
>IM BOOOORED THERES NOTHING 2 DU HEAR
>DRRRR I WUNNA COME BAK PLZ
:l
In all seriousness, the episode in itself was great. That actor was not. It made me seriously think that this episode would have been a lot better without a child at all. I mean, even without the child they still would have stopped the bomb from going off, it's not like the child was of any use at all.
I hope to see less or NONE of her in future episodes, because that child to me feels braindead.
/endrant
Yeah Courtney was absolute garbage. I remember seeing a few reviewers before the episode calling her "endearing". And I gave them the benefit of the doubt as she wasn't that bad, so hey why not.VincentX3 said:
But man could you make an even more unlikeable chavvy bratty teenager. She serves almost no purpose, has the wit and the intelligence of a fucking stone and even when she's not involved with the action she still manages to be annoying.
It's the second time, with nightmare in silver being the first, that they just absolutely fuck up the writing and casting of a child actor. Are they seriously unable to write such characters today ? Is it hard ?
Hopefully Courtney will have fucked off by now and get into the garbage drawer alongside the NiS kids
All of this ^Busard said:
I mean, I've never been so pissed off over a show before (It just goes to show how much I really do like DR.Who)
BUT WOW! It's been 4 days since I saw this episode and the thought of "she might be on next saturdays episode" pisses me the f**k off.
I scene I forgot to mention was the whole "b0t um nut spacial?" plot.
:l
YOUR F**KING 15!! Excuse me, act your f**king age and stop being offended if a RANDOM DUDE just happends to say your not special. Also no, your not, your a stubborn idiot with the intelligence of a rock who PRESSES RANDOM BUTTONS ON A TIME MACHINE AND COMPLAINS THAT YOUR BORED!
Seriously, after this episode alone, I hope they get rid of her.
CAPTCHA: lumpy gravy
Yea, she's a lump alright. It's probably cancer, get rid of it.
Also sorry for that small 1% that probably do like her somehow. But I had to speak my mind about it.
A space ship without the fuel or ability to get to the moon might I add. It can only just get to LEO.V TheSystem V said:
Hmm, quite a few legitamate critacisms, though the episode felt good to me, apart from the spiders, which seemed arbitrary even without the science fail.
There is one thing that seems to have escaped attention, the fact that the guy who was sent off to die was supposed to be priming the bombs, I don't think the rest had a chance to do it, and I doubt that's what the timer was for.
So I'm going to go ahead and assume that whatever they did, the bombs wouldn't go off, and the Doctor knew it, but he was so frustrated, particularly with the astronaut's attitude, that he wanted them to feel the weight of choice on their shoulders, something he is very familiar with.
There is one thing that seems to have escaped attention, the fact that the guy who was sent off to die was supposed to be priming the bombs, I don't think the rest had a chance to do it, and I doubt that's what the timer was for.
So I'm going to go ahead and assume that whatever they did, the bombs wouldn't go off, and the Doctor knew it, but he was so frustrated, particularly with the astronaut's attitude, that he wanted them to feel the weight of choice on their shoulders, something he is very familiar with.
Yet again I feel like one of the only few people that didn't like this episode.
I just wish the writers would slow down and give us some natural sounding dialogue for a change, when was the last time a scene with two or more characters sat down and just talked? I don't mean a huge exposition dump, nor do I mean the now common place lame one-liners that are full of their own smug gittiness and leaves you feeling like cringing.
I mean people just sitting contemplating their next move while chatting and learning more about each other, you know actual character development?
I like fast paced dialogue sometimes but nowadays that is all we get, this episode did seem like we were going to get that but sadly not. No it was just move quickly onto the next scene, leaving me to not care at all.
Then we had that kid too, can anybody write a kid in Doctor Who that isn't another cocky, smart arsed wee sh!te, that in my humble opinion should be excited and happy that they're travelling through time and space with a friendly alien.
But yet again... NOPE! Just like the episode of DW called "A Nightmare in Silver," where the kids just complained and acted all self entitled, while complaining about being bored... *sigh*
Sure this kid wasn't as bad as those other two from that series 7 Matt Smith episode, but she was still pretty bad.
I've said this before and I'll say it again unless I am proved wrong, Steven Moffat can not tell a coherent story with naturally sounding dialogue but he has/had great ideas but he does not know how to structure it together properly with everything else a story needs, either that or he simply does not care. (Yes I know the credited writer was Peter Harness, but Moffat's tropes were all over this)
I didn't hate it as much as I did with The Caretaker from the week before, as there were some good things in it that I liked which was The Doctor stating that Why should he decide the future of Humanity, as it's not his choice to make but sadly again, it was done in such a forceful and unnatural way that it missed the point of that line.
It felt like that great line was only there to give Clara a reason to get angry with The Doctor, which is something that should have been built up more over the course of the series but NOPE again.
Last week the whine master Danny Pink gave this ultimatum to Clara about The Doctor and shortly after that has came to fruition by the end of the next episode.
A great foreshadowing, story arc there Steven... *sigh*
Not for the first time and certainly not the last... I am sensing a matching pattern here, I could even decorate my living room with it!
I just wish the writers would slow down and give us some natural sounding dialogue for a change, when was the last time a scene with two or more characters sat down and just talked? I don't mean a huge exposition dump, nor do I mean the now common place lame one-liners that are full of their own smug gittiness and leaves you feeling like cringing.
I mean people just sitting contemplating their next move while chatting and learning more about each other, you know actual character development?
I like fast paced dialogue sometimes but nowadays that is all we get, this episode did seem like we were going to get that but sadly not. No it was just move quickly onto the next scene, leaving me to not care at all.
Then we had that kid too, can anybody write a kid in Doctor Who that isn't another cocky, smart arsed wee sh!te, that in my humble opinion should be excited and happy that they're travelling through time and space with a friendly alien.
But yet again... NOPE! Just like the episode of DW called "A Nightmare in Silver," where the kids just complained and acted all self entitled, while complaining about being bored... *sigh*
Sure this kid wasn't as bad as those other two from that series 7 Matt Smith episode, but she was still pretty bad.
I've said this before and I'll say it again unless I am proved wrong, Steven Moffat can not tell a coherent story with naturally sounding dialogue but he has/had great ideas but he does not know how to structure it together properly with everything else a story needs, either that or he simply does not care. (Yes I know the credited writer was Peter Harness, but Moffat's tropes were all over this)
I didn't hate it as much as I did with The Caretaker from the week before, as there were some good things in it that I liked which was The Doctor stating that Why should he decide the future of Humanity, as it's not his choice to make but sadly again, it was done in such a forceful and unnatural way that it missed the point of that line.
It felt like that great line was only there to give Clara a reason to get angry with The Doctor, which is something that should have been built up more over the course of the series but NOPE again.
Last week the whine master Danny Pink gave this ultimatum to Clara about The Doctor and shortly after that has came to fruition by the end of the next episode.
A great foreshadowing, story arc there Steven... *sigh*
Not for the first time and certainly not the last... I am sensing a matching pattern here, I could even decorate my living room with it!
First of all, to the people who are saying that you shouldn't complain about the science because it's Doctor Who, talking rubbish about weird space phenomena that are millions of light years away or weird devices from thousands of years in the future is one thing. Saying complete rubbish about the moon, the actual moon which we have actually been to, and calling a giant spider a prokaryotic being is another. It much more sorely tests your suspension of disbelief when it's talking about something within our realm of understanding.
Like my Dad pointed out when you see the shuttle landing on the moon... There's no atmosphere on the moon, so the shuttle shouldn't really be able to glide down like that. It should have just plummeted straight onto the ground (unless the increased gravity had given the moon an atmosphere? But that seems like the sort of thing that would have been mentioned, and I'm not sure if it's possible for a planetoid to gain an entire atmosphere in roughly ten years. Screw it, the entire thing's rubbish, what am I talking about).
PS. I also think that the writing for this Doctor has veered from 'grumpy' to 'sociopathic'. Letting humanity decide for themselves is one thing, purposefully leaving them in the dark just to fuck with them is another entirely. And I do wish he'd stop being so self-righteous about soldiers, not everyone can be an immortal, hyper-intelligent time traveller with a magic wand. He gets pissy about people being soldiers to fight the Daleks for goodness' sake, what are they supposed to be?
But then she gets sent back to the Tardis and immediately starts complaining that she's bored and asking if there's games to play... No human being would act like that! No one goes straight from terrified to whinging that quickly, especially not when A) There's still a hell of a lot at stake right outside the door, including billions of lives, and B) They're sitting inside a time-travelling spaceship! A teenager with a short attention span would start exploring, not fiddling with their phones! But hey, teenagers, amarite? Always on their phones!
Basically, "arsehole kid gets the rough edges knocked off of them through terrifying space adventure" might be a bit cliché, but at least it actually makes sense.
Like my Dad pointed out when you see the shuttle landing on the moon... There's no atmosphere on the moon, so the shuttle shouldn't really be able to glide down like that. It should have just plummeted straight onto the ground (unless the increased gravity had given the moon an atmosphere? But that seems like the sort of thing that would have been mentioned, and I'm not sure if it's possible for a planetoid to gain an entire atmosphere in roughly ten years. Screw it, the entire thing's rubbish, what am I talking about).
PS. I also think that the writing for this Doctor has veered from 'grumpy' to 'sociopathic'. Letting humanity decide for themselves is one thing, purposefully leaving them in the dark just to fuck with them is another entirely. And I do wish he'd stop being so self-righteous about soldiers, not everyone can be an immortal, hyper-intelligent time traveller with a magic wand. He gets pissy about people being soldiers to fight the Daleks for goodness' sake, what are they supposed to be?
Mostly it's the fact that she was horribly written. I mean, the classic arc of that kind of character is going on some magical/sci-fi adventure, realising how much bigger the universe is than them and learning to deal with it and not be so horrible. And we almost got that when she said she's scared out of her wits and just wants to go home; I actually thought it was kind of refreshing to see someone actually being scared by what they've been thrown into in a Doctor Who episode.faeshadow said:
But then she gets sent back to the Tardis and immediately starts complaining that she's bored and asking if there's games to play... No human being would act like that! No one goes straight from terrified to whinging that quickly, especially not when A) There's still a hell of a lot at stake right outside the door, including billions of lives, and B) They're sitting inside a time-travelling spaceship! A teenager with a short attention span would start exploring, not fiddling with their phones! But hey, teenagers, amarite? Always on their phones!
Basically, "arsehole kid gets the rough edges knocked off of them through terrifying space adventure" might be a bit cliché, but at least it actually makes sense.
"Pseudoscience" has been the modus operandi for the entire series (old and new Who) after Season 1, where it was originally intended to get kids interested in science (and history to a lesser extent). Sufficed to say, that premise did not last long in practice.Jim_Callahan said:
I may have acknowledged such complaints had this been a new show with a new premise, but really?
Dr. Who is 50 years old. FIFTY FUCKING YEARS of absurd pseudoscience and whacky adventures.
Anyone seriously whining about Dr. Who having "pseudoscience" at this point isn't worth reading.
There's a line you don't cross, though. There's been some odd science, but for the most part, the science at least makes sense in-universe. It lends just enough credibility to allow you to suspend belief.Atmos Duality said:
Then there's this episode, that doesn't so much require a suspension of disbelief as much as require you to take your disbelief out back and have it shot.