Why I Love Kill the Moon

Guest contributor Ben Hobson gives his view on the divisive episode.

Despite its rave critical reviews, Kill the Moon divided fans. One friend of mine deemed it as “too predictable” and others have criticised the storyline’s “the Moon is an egg” revelation and moral issues. However, there were many things about the episode that made it stand out of the crowd for me and helped it become one of my favourites (if not my outright favourite) of the series.

The Setting

The Moon! As a child, I was actually scared of the Moon. When it was dark and I could see it through my window, I would hastily pull my curtains together to shield it from my view. Even now it can still look eerie when there are a couple of dark clouds coming across it. There has always been a certain charm and wonderment about the Moon which surely makes it a perfect setting for the charming and wonderful show that is Doctor Who! Peter Harness utilised the possibilities of a dark and creepy Moon perfectly, and made something totally new out of it. We’ve all heard the famous saying about the Moon being made out of cheese, but for it to be an eggshell is certainly new!

The Scare Factor

The great thing about Doctor Who is how amazingly simple it can be for a show that is based around very complex theories. Steven Moffat made use of the common fear of the dark earlier in the series, and in Kill the Moon we had the even more common fear of spiders. This episode undoubtedly sent shivers down the spines of many adults, let alone children. You never quite knew what was around the next corner in this episode, whether it was simply a dark room, a spider or something else.

Paul Wilmshurst did a fantastic job with the directing, and Murray Gold’s score only added to the episode’s tension when it was needed. I say that because a lot of the creepiest moments were done simply using silence and nothing else. Imagine being on the Moon, in a dark room, knowing there are some deadly creatures close by with no sound to comfort you. That image terrifies me to my very core. On top of all this, the deaths were quick and sudden, and what made me very happy was how very dead they stayed. Too often in Doctor Who we see a supposed ‘death’, only for them to return with some escape clause later in the episode (see Time Heist). Here, we saw a quick, scary and dangerous creature showing us all its might, and coupled with the aforementioned setting this made it very scary indeed.

Classic Sci-Fi

Doctor Who is billed as a Science-Fiction show, though sometimes I believe it doesn’t quite come across as such. This one, however, certainly did. In fact, Series 8 in general was very good at bringing back that factor, with episodes such as Into the Dalek, Time Heist and Kill the Moon all feeling very ‘Science-Fiction-ey’, at least for me. Peter Harness did an excellent job of “Hinchcliffe[ing] the s*** out of it”, and the Classic era feel is something that I think New Who has somewhat lacked at times. There was something especially magical about that old era, and for me Kill the Moon actually harnessed (I do apologise) at least some of that old charm.

Doctor who?

Before Series 8 began I said that I wanted the return of episodes that caused debates amongst the fans of whether the Doctor was right in his actions or not. It had been a while since we had properly questioned the Doctor (debating his decision in A Town Called Mercy of whether he was right to throw out Kahler Jex is the last time I can remember, though even that was deemed void as he allowed him back in anyway), but this episode is sure to divide fans. Was the Doctor right to abandon Clara and co.?

Either way, it was a pretty ugly thing to do, especially with a schoolgirl there. This really does beg the question “Doctor who?”. We thought we knew the Doctor as a man who could always be relied on to save the day, yet here he is just swanning off without a care in the world. Or should I say, for the world. This is the kind of stuff I’ve wanted to see for a long time, and I do hope that more like this is to come.

Humanity

Had it not been for the compassion of Coal Hill, the perfectly innocent creature would have been unfairly killed. Humanity elected to murder the creature in cold blood. This episode got right into the heart of questioning humanity and it just made you think “Are we really like that? Perhaps we should show more care for other creatures instead of just ourselves…”.

Conclusion

Kill the Moon is an episode which took the very simple concepts of a creepy Moon and scary spiders and turned them into something very thought-provoking and, at times, shocking, especially when the Doctor abandoned them all. It was very out of this world and I felt that the tone and the pacing of the episode were just right. It was tense, dark, scary and thought-provoking. In other words, Kill the Moon is everything Doctor Who should be. In my opinion, at least.

Let me know your opinions down in the comments!