Now, look. I can accept the person travelling through space and time in a blue box that’s bigger on the inside. I’ll go with it, and suspend my disbelief so long as it is internally consistent.
When they start writing all sorts of other things that I just have to accept, despite the fact that they are impossible and not explained in any internally consistent way - that’s bad writing.
In short, for those who say “It’s a show about (fantastical element #37), just accept.” No! Writers should not insult my intelligence with nonsensical stories, bad plotting, bad science.
All of the dark matter in the entire solar system would add up to about the mass of Ceres. Not enough to tweak the tides.
But sure, somehow an egg exists (without a mother) covered by the 4+ billion year old crust (not 100 million, Mr. Doctor) and an alien creature with wings (which make audible noise all to Earth?) – because of course you would flap your way through the vacuum of space – and there are giant spider things which apparently don’t need food to metabolize (or they do, or something) and can survive a hard vacuum but don’t like sunlight. Okay, all that I can accept. I can even accept some hand-wavy reason for all the mass to appear. And critics of course liked it because Evil Humans Chose Not To Kill.
But.
The only thing that would have saved the Earth is the creature hatching and going away. The bombing would kill the creature and leave the mass in place. Ya know, the mass that was causing the tides that was killing people? It was never a choice at all.
And that doesn’t explain how gravity shut off, but returned with the Doctor’s yoyo, except script. And I always tuck Lysol INSIDE MY F***ING space suit?!?
Argh, I just relistened to Clara’s self-debate. I quote: “No tides, but we’d survive that. There’s uh, they’ve knocked out the satellites, there’s no internet, no mobiles, I’d be fine with that.”
I was wondering why he kept saying the moon was only 100 million years old too. I couldn’t decide if this was actually canon in the who universe or if the doctor was referring to the creature’s life-cycle. I think I gave the show too much credit.
Good point. What the hell was humanity’s plan, anyway? All they know is that the moon’s gravity has increased to apparently earth-like levels in the last 30 years. If it’s from increased mass then blowing it up changes absolutely nothing.
More plot contrivances I forgot about.
Another thing I thought of–so, if all humanity wants to do is blow up the moon, why the hell are they sending them in a shuttle crewed by disposable old people?? This ain’t like Armageddon where they had to send a crew of oil drillers to drill a hole first or else the bomb would be ineffective. They literally had no job other than to detonate the nukes on the surface. Why not just send, you know, a giant missile instead and cut out the geezers? And since all 3 knew it was a suicide mission, why did the nukes have a 40 minute timer anyway? They knew there was no escape–why prolong their unavoidable deaths by 40 minutes?
So Mexico will launch their own space program and begin conducting manned explorations of the moons surface in the next 35 years. I know its SciFi but that strikes me as being a *bit *optimistic.
Gah, I should go to bed or I’ll just keep ranting about this abortion of an episode. (get it??)
I don’t even know how it would be possible to shut down all the lights in the city I live in. Even if you could push through the order to turn off the city power grid in 40 minutes (which you probably couldn’t), there’s still plenty of street lights that have their own solar-powered batteries and there are plenty of office buildings which have their own power backup systems. Although, it would kind of been funny to have Clara see that all the lights stayed on, and be all heart-warmed, only to find out that it just wasn’t possible to shut down the lights in that time frame and she just lucked out.
The showrunner’s/BBC’s hype for this episode promised us three things:
SteMo told the writer to “Hinchcliffe the **** out of the first half”. In other words, to make it very scary. But the minute-long teaser trailer the BBC released showed the MotW so we knew what was coming. :smack:
That, after this, things will be different; How are they different? So Clara’s pissed off and may not travel with the Doctor anymore. Donna did pretty much the same thing at the end of The Runaway Bride and Martha gave Ten a piece of her mind when she left. Meh…
Giant mutant spiders. We were promised frikkin’ giant mutant spiders. Instead we got…a bacterium?!? That wasn’t a giant mutant spider. This is a giant mutant spider. :eek:
Not true. Solar Windis a real scientific phenomenon. Solar sailson spacecraft have long been proposed, have been part of science fiction stories long before Doctor Who and have even been used in reality.
Dragon wings in space are a ridiculous concept with no scientific basis.
I guess I am just willing to shut off any critical thinking for this show (excepting eps that call up tropes that evoke it) and focused more on enjoying Clara’s character arc. If one wants science with their science fiction this is not going to be their show. There are few eps of NuWho that hold up to critical thinking in the least. Yes, it would be nice if they made some show of it anyway but why forgive so much otherwise with “timeywhimey” and “look monster run!” and yet be bothered by this one. This one was about the feel, the atmosphere, and the character arcs. Given that I cn look away from the same endemic illogic that bothered me horribly in “Time Heist.”
[ul]
[li]100 million year old moon-sized fetus is born pregnant and lays an egg bigger than itself[/li][li]It’s night everywhere on Earth, everybody with a light source just happens to be listening when some strange girl asks them to vote on the fate of the moon, and nobody thinks this is unusual[/li][li]3-4 schmoes are in charge of enough nuclear bombs to destroy the moon and have no security to deal with intruders[/li][/ul]
Granted, suspension of disbelief is sometimes necessary because the payoff will be gratifying, but the payoff is… a big space bird hatches.
Forget the science. What bugged me is that the episode tried to be both sickeningly sentimental (as Moffat usually is) while at the same time being deeply cynical about humanity and its evil, evil ways. Choose one, OK?
I generally liked the episode, but I also find the truckloads of critical acclaim that I have been seeing in various Internet reviews a little bewildering. Bonus points to me for instantly realizing that, once the astronaut made a point of establishing that the president of the United States in 2049 was a woman, we’d come to learn that Courtney – who has been fretting a great deal about whether or not she is special – would at least be implied to be that future president. (And I don’t have any problem imagining that the United States could have changed the rules at some point to allow foreigners to hold that office.)
Um… Not the payoff. The payoff was the scene with Clara and the Doctor at the end, and with Pink after that. The monster stuff was there to give the characters something to do.
Allow me to fanwank that for ya: even though she has spent most of her life in the UK, Courtney was born on US soil, thus she’s officially a 'murcan citizen, and can hold the office of President. Yer welcome!
I am not enjoying this season. Capaldi is magnificent but unlikeable; I don’t know how the show survived Hartnell and him coming back jerkier but better acted has not paid off so far. I don’t know what the payoff will be, but I am losing patience.
