We just finished watching last week’s Doctor Who, “Kill the Moon”–because we’d gotten behind what with my having to do a hard press through finishing Victory of the Hawk. But even aside from that, I’d been having a very hard time mustering up enough give-a-damn to actually watch this one. I did ask Dara and Paul if we could watch this one finally back to back with this weekend’s episode, and as it happened, we just watched “Kill the Moon” without moving on to today’s episode.
Dara just declared herself done with the show until Moffat’s gone. Me, I’m not sure if I’m bailing completely yet, but the show’s now on very thin probation with me.
(ETA: Adding in a cut tag because I do have a spoiler for the episode in here.)
I’d already been very cranky about this season’s character development and how they’re currently portraying the Doctor. I’d had an inkling about how this episode was going to end, too. And I’m sad to say that what I just watched didn’t even really provide me the emotional satisfaction that I think it was shooting for. I was already long tired of the way Twelve’s been behaving, and Clara’s unloading on him just didn’t feel effective to me. Partly because I think she should have unloaded on him a long time ago, and partly because I’m very doubtful that it’ll even mean anything in the ongoing arc of the season.
I know how Moffat’s character arcs have worked in the past. And now, they’ve worked so hard to set the Doctor up as this Alien Unknowable Creature who’s been trying to make nice to Clara only because he knows she thinks he’s supposed to–and not because he actually learns anything from it–that I have a hard time believing that the Doctor will behave fundamentally differently after that.
In short, I’m still not convinced he’s not going to be a jerk for the rest of the season, and I’m not prepared to spend more time watching it. Not yet.
The overall failure of science and coherent plot logic in general in this episode didn’t help, either. Yes, I know–it’s Doctor Who, it’s science fantasy at best. But this entire story was an overall mess of an experience for me. The entire concept of the moon as a great big space dragon egg hatching–and which ever so conveniently dropped another one just like it a few moments after the big event–just knocked me out of the story far enough that I couldn’t even get emotionally invested in Clara’s long overdue anger.
And right now I can’t decide yet if I have enough give-a-damn to watch this week’s episode. I’ll decide after I finish Victory of the Hawk. Which I’ll be getting back to now.
