Isaac wrote:I'm not trying to make any of you like this episode, but it would be nice if anyone would grant me that given how many people are convinced they saw something great, maybe there is something to our point of view.
There is something to your point of view: the ideas behind the episode's story are great. The episode itself is absolute garbage.
Isaac wrote:Can we agree that it is possible for something to be great even if it doesn't work for ourselves at all?
My answer is yes, absolutely. I know of movies, books, TV shows I can say are great but are just not to my taste. I have no problem with this idea; we all have different opinions and preferences. But if you're asking me "Is Kill the Moon great but just does not work for you?", my answer is no. Something I should have mentioned earlier is that the bad science surrounding the story is far from being the only thing that made me angry about this episode.
Absolutely everything made me angry.
As said earlier, the characters made me angry. Clara and the Doctor are inconsistent in themselves and thus inconsistent in their relationship (and I'm talking here about the entire season, not just Kill the Moon). Clara should be a response to Capaldi's Doctor being a prick. But is he a prick? Sometimes he is, sometimes he's not. I have no idea who this Doctor is. I perfectly know who Eccleston, Tennant and Smith were. I loved them for being so well defined, and so different between themselves. Capaldi's has no particular personality. I want to say he's a grumpy old man (which would be perfect with Capaldi, and the Doctor feeling old after Smith an interesting theme), but when I think about him, it's just not the way I feel. At times he's the grumpy old man, at times he's the crazy time traveler alien, at times he's something else. He's too random. As BDA said, he's what the episode needs him to be. It should be the opposite. And it's the same with Clara. Is she a strong-willed woman who can be the perfect response to the grumpy old Doctor? Not really. Sometimes. Not always. I am perfectly aware that human personalities are complicated and multi-layered, but I look at Clara and see someone different every sequence. Her story with the Doctor is forgotten completely, for the benefit of Pink who we still don't care about after seven episodes. She's so random that Jenna-Louise Coleman's acting only angers me (which it shouldn't; I think she's formidable, and Capaldi too).
And of course, we have the supporting characters, Lundvik and her team... who are complete morons. Moronic astronauts, yes, of course. Please don't ask me to explain why it makes me want to pluck someone's eyes out. Lundvik herself is completely bland. I don't know the actress and I don't want to be a jerk, but unless she was specifically instructed to be so boring people will actually start to fast-forward her every line, there's a problem.
Let's not forget Courtney, who apparently has no issue whatsoever processing the TARDIS, the Doctor and all the space-time thing. Because we have seen it before DOES NOT mean you can dismiss it completely, Moffat. Make your characters believable, for God's sake. Especially children. Oh, and the "Do you really think I'm not special" thing? I almost stopped the episode there (at 2', which could have set some sort of record). And of course we have oversized spiders which don't really seem to freak her out more than regular spiders.
Let's talk some more about the bad science, too. Doctor Who has a habit of showing me crazy things from the future and other civilizations and feed me technobabble until I accept it. Here we spend the whole episode be showed things from our present world we know and understand and have them do stupid things. It cannot be technobabbled. Doc Sub said none of this is real... but in that case, it is. Because the average viewer might not know much about these things doesn't mean you can go bananas with them. The power grid moment was downright idiotic. The idea driving it could have been interesting, but even in a fairy tale I wouldn't buy this.
Last but not least, the visuals. This episode looked especially bad. I'm not asking much, but please, someone explain to the VFX guys that the Earth and the Moon ARE LIT BY THE SAME FUCKING THING.
Owen is right, I reached the boiling point. But this episode worked really hard for it. Robots of Sherwood wasn't great, but the dialogues and setting saved it for me, which it didn't for BDA. There's not a single part of Kill the Moon I would salvage.
Either Moffat and his writer are lazy, or they're actually making a strong choice and completely failing at it. There's no silver lining here. I can't forgive something this insulting.
