You don’t even have to work that hard. If one of her parents is a citizen (born or naturalized) then she is a natural born citizen.
I read that the sixth Doctor being too unlikeable got Collin Baker booted from the show sooner than was planned, even though his character was going to soften up a bit his run was ended before it could happen. I don’t know if Capaldi’s Doctor is as bad, but I’m assuming they’ll make him more likeable as time goes on.
Mother of God, that was sewage quality. Pretty much all the sins have been mentioned above, but this was sickeningly awful on an incredible number of levels.
All this, plus the rest of the post, is spot-on. Bombs don’t get rid of mass, there are no need for wings in space, and most obviously of all, 3 seconds after being born a “baby” lays an egg EXACTLY THE SIZE OF ITS OWN.
Look, generally I’m not one of those people sitting in front of the TV screen with a graphing calculator looking for science errors. Writers aren’t astrophysicists, sometimes you just need filler for the people side, etc, etc. But this is on a whole different level. It’s not even fridge logic - you don’t get as far as the fridge. It doesn’t make sense. At. All.
Ah, glad to see I wasn’t the only one who picked up on that. Especially the whole scene with the Doctor facing the women saying “it’s your choice; to kill it or not” or whatever. Talk about adding on a whole new level of facepalming.
And, lastly, this. Thing is, there could have been a shred - a really, really, tiny shred, mind you - a shred of goodness in the episode had they detonated the bomb after Earth voted. It would have been an analogy for even when you personally don’t agree with the masses, democracy is right. It sucks, but it’s right. Instead, you have Clara acting like a moron and deciding to murder billions of people for the sake of saving some moon-fetus 'cause it’s so UNIQUE and SPECIAL, then the Doctor acting all superior when the aforementioned completely illogical things happen and magically save humanity. After that, you’ve got Clara throwing a hissy fit about whatever and Pink acting all Pink-ish. Moffat’s in the doghouse.
Argh. Just needed to get that out. Of course, I’ll watch the next one, because Space Train! 
The thing is that it’s not Capaldi’s fault, it’s the fault of the scripts. Or it is his fault because he’s too good at playing bad that it accentuates the nastiness in the scripts. Or something like that. Whatever, but it’s ep 7 and I expect/hope for some sort of change soon. ETA: AFTER the stupid fucking Murder on the Orient Express episode, which can’t possibly be good. Though it’s nice they are bringing back the Worst Special Effects crown that Doctor Who has worn so long.
A tech at my pharmacy looks like a mix of Jenna Coleman and Allison Brie, Annie from Community. Makes a brother happy to be sick.
The disconnect between the professional reviews and the fan reaction I’m seeing on this one is remarkable; generally speaking, I’m seeing it called possibly best of the season to date in reviews, while here it’s rather as if the Doctor Who franchise personally came over to everyone’s house, kicked their dogs, and punched their gran in the kisser before taking a big dump on the dining room table.
Personally, I thought it was fantastic. Capaldi is magisterial; he is without a doubt the best thing to happen to the role since the reboot. I can’t disagree that there were lots of things that don’t stand up to much thinking about, but I’m not a terribly critical watcher. For me, the episode was about character development and the moral dilemma Clara and co found themselves in, not the MoTW or the basic implausibility of the premise. I’m not the most typical of Whovians, though–my least favorite episode was The Satan Pit, because seriously, Satan, and it’s a fairly popular episode; on the other hand, I didn’t have any problem with the pirate episode, which I understand to be pretty universally hated.
It’s actually an immature Space Whale. They lose their wings when they mature.
This, for me too. I love Capaldi. If I like the characters in a show, I can put up with plot holes the size of space whales if the show has good character interaction, snappy dialog, and development of the ongoing plot. Basically, I’m easy to please. I didn’t like a lot of Matt Smith’s episodes because I wasn’t that fond of him as the Doctor most of the time (he was okay–I didn’t hate him by any means and he had his moments, but Tennant and Capaldi will get a lot more passes from me because I adore them both. Even crappy scripts have their good spots.
Yep, thought I’d chime in with a “me too” as the episode is getting such a bashing. Tennant annoyed the tits off me towards the end (although RTD’s writing was getting to me way before that) at Matt Smith was an unmitigated disaster that got perilously close to me giving up on the show altogether.
I’ll throw in with the defenders of this episode, and honestly cannot understand the hate it’s getting. Yes, ‘the moon is an egg’ is kinda stupid and spits in the face of science, which of course no episode of Doctor Who has ever done before. This is a show that rises above such things, and gives us hard science fiction premises such as underground lizard people, dinosaurs living on a spaceship, space whales, living suns, heroes that can store their consciousness in a watch, sentient human fat, ghosts, and restoring the (levitation?) powers of a Time Lord by having the entire world chant his name. It is, in a word, silly, and I think a major dividing line of Doctor Who fans is whether they find that silliness to be a flaw or a feature.
The moon hatching a dragon was just a little too silly for me, but that’s okay, because the real plot was the straining relationship between Clara and the Doctor, and that worked well for me, especially at the end when she let him have it.
I also found it kind of interesting that the dilemma of the episode was basically the same one that was in “The Runaway Bride,” in which the Doctor took a far more violent stance. I kinda doubt the writer intended for this, but I like the idea that he bowed out because he knew he might make the same choice twice, and hid behind the “humanity needs to grow up” speech, which gets him into trouble with Clara. Overall, pretty good episode.
ETA: Don’t much like Courtney. If there’s a bright spot to Clara leaving soon, it’s that Courtney goes too.
There seemed to be a lot of good acting and some nice character moments in this, but I couldn’t appreciate them because OMG WORST SCIENCE EVER!!!
I’m just baffled that this made it through the writing process. No one knows about conservation of mass over there at the DW offices? If there was just one such mistake, OK, I’d let it go with some actively willing suspension of disbelief, but my goodness, it just kept coming and coming.
And THEN the whole earth agrees to kill it. (which would just leave a massive corpse in orbit, mind you) the WHOLE earth! Every single light went out! (oh, and I guess you only get a vote if you have a TV, and were watching at that moment, and speak English. But everyone else turned out their lights anyway. Right.) Except for super-moral-girl Clara who overrides it, who the astronaut ALLOWS to override it. (why was that off switch even in reach?)
By the time the creature had wings and was laying an egg bigger than itself, I had already checked out.
My wife has officially given up on the show after this one. I’ll keep watching, but man… what a stinker. A few more like this and I might be done too.
After having some time to calmly reflect and digest opposing views, I can feel that I can at last post my rationally, carefully considered opinion: FUCK THIS EPISODE SO DAMN MUCH!
First off, I am a scientist and a biologist. This episode was like a massive kick in the face and giant middle finger to science. OK, fine, not everyone will feel this way, but GOOD HELL at least learn the first principle of conservation of mass! I would say these are the science-specific objections:
-The Doctor concludes that the moon is an egg and about to hatch, because it is the only logical explanation for these facts: (1) it has suddenly put on a whole lot of weight; (2) giant fucking bacteria (more about those later); (3) amniotic fluid under the rocks. Think about that - those are the facts, and the doctor makes the conclusion based on those facts. Except, of course, that eggs don’t ever somehow get heavier as they’re about to hatch! That’s just idiotic. EGGS DON’T EAT. Again - conservation of mass.
-GIANT FUCKING BACTERIA WITH JAWS AND EYES THAT ARE SUPPOSEDLY STILL SINGLE-CELLED??? WHAT THE SERIOUS FUCK??? I can’t even begin to list all of the things that are wrong with this.
-It apparently takes all of two seconds to identify “moon-sized lake of amniotic fluid of a previously unknown alien life form” and distinguish it from every other possible liquid in the known universe.
-BLOWING SHIT UP DOESN’T MAKE MASS MAGICALLY DISAPPEAR. Nor can you just say that “the eggshell just disintegrates after hatching”. THE MASS STILL EXISTS!!!
-The Doctor makes some statement at the end about how, oh, of course, the baby isn’t going to destroy its nest, and everything is just designed to work out and not cause any problems as if that’s some sort of immutable law of nature. This is purest bullshit.
-And, again, the baby laying another moon???!! CONSERVATION OF FUCKING MASS, ASSHOLES!!!
OK, enough science. Let’s look at it from a just plain storytelling perspective. Lots of people have identified stupid things. I have just one more that annoyed the shit out of me: the whole “difficult choices don’t really exist and will never have to be made, because things will just work out OK in the end” thing. Right. So the gang is given a difficult, impossible choice, where there is no good option, but only the lesser of two evils. Fine. Great storytelling technique. But FUCK the stupid, lazy-ass cop out where you just do what feels right and everything works out just great! DAMN I hate that attitude, and it makes for an incredibly unsatisfying resolution. Oh, just kidding, those weren’t the only two options! There’s a secret hidden option where everyone goes home and has ice cream!
Just imagine the courage it would have taken and the depth it would have added if they had stuck to the original premise, and Clara would have had to actually deal with the repercussions of either killing the baby monster or destroying umpteen billions of humans living on Earth. THAT’S a damn story! All right, fine, Dr Who is never going to be a show that delves into that kind of moral darkness, but if you’re going to back away from the consequences, you don’t get to use the premise. It’s cheap, it’s lazy, and it’s incredibly unsatisfying. And THEN to have the Doctor pop back up and smugly rub it all back in… At least Clara got justifiably pissed off, but still.
Gah. That was a horrible, horrible hour of television. And I LOVE Peter Capaldi. I want to love his take on the doctor SO MUCH. It’s not him; it’s these horrible, stupid, awful scripts.
FUCK THIS EPISODE.
I took it as an extension of the new series idea of “conversations between Clara and The Doctor are really thinly-encoded conversations between the shows fans and the writers”. Basically the writers are saying, “The Doctor doing crazy shit with ridiculous plot lines and really soft sci fi all while being an inscrutable git is part of the finest Doctor Who tradition, but we know you don’t really like it”.
But I do like it. Mostly I like that it’s a show about the dynamic between a bombastic alien and his human friends, and the relationships that grow out of that, but I also like that it’s set against the backdrop of ‘crazy shit with ridiculous plot lines and soft sci fi.’ I like that it’s a show where the writer’s general attitude toward the unbelievable is, “fuck it, let’s go for it.” The moon is an egg? Let’s do this shit. Whale in space? Sure, why not? Hey, remember how the Doctor lost his hand? Can we merge the DNA of that hand with his companion and grow him a human clone with her personality? Great, go with that!
The end result being that sometimes Doctor Who is monstrously stupid, but it’s also one of the most imaginative shows on TV. Kill the Moon certainly pushed the unbelievably whimsical to the breaking point, but I just don’t understand how people can get upset about conservation of mass on a TV show about a magical, shape shifting alien traveling the universe in his sentient time machine.
I don’t much mind the bad science. Clearly, the Doctor Who universe has its own set of laws that are, shall we say, somewhat flexible in their application. There’s technology indistinguishable from magic, and magic indistinguishable from technology. Sometimes, things don’t make sense—and really, in the real world, they don’t, either. The science fiction in Doctor Who has always been at best a backdrop before which to enact some very real, and at times, very poignant, human drama in which the audience can find themselves and maybe see some reflection of their own daily struggles, perhaps be told that it’s all gonna be all right in the end, even if everybody knows that’s ultimately just a lie designed to keep us going. Bend the science as much as you want, hell, break it, as long as it’s in the service of a good story.
It’s on this count that the episode didn’t work for me. First of all, it seems that the Doctor has gone beyond cranky and curmodgeonly to outright prickish. What, Courtney “isn’t special”? What happened to “in 900 years, I’ve never met anyone that wasn’t important?” To me, a large part of what made the Doctor was that, while he has a keen awareness of humanity’s many failures and flaws, he also always had the capability to see its promise, and even though that’s somewhat of a Sci-Fi cliche, they generally made it work without seeming hackneyed. But somehow, that’s been missing lately, and most prominently in this episode. Where’s the wonder, where’s the glee and joy at the revelation of the wonders of the universe, or the capability of the human (or alien) spirit? There’s just too much “get off my lawn”, too little “all of time and space, where do you wanna go?”.
And the rest of the episode, as other people have said, was just—fake moral choices, difficult moments of character development undercut by sugar-coating them afterwards, big questions being raised and then remaining unanswered, or being answered only with a half-assed handwave. It seemed as if the writers touched on the big issues, but were afraid to actually grasp them, do something with them. The only redeeming feature was the spat between Clara and the Doctor afterwards; this, at least, might herald some worthwhile character development. I hope they’ll at least have the guts to follow through on that.
Oh well. There’s always next week.
I will hear no criticism of Georgia Moffett. Silence!
On a different note, I used to occasionally follow the discussions of various shows on TWOP. Now that it’s gone, does anybody know of some worthwhile successor for that?
Did you miss the Doctor’s speech on the beach? He’s still got the wonder. Don’t you remember how excited he was at the beginning of the last episode: “Fish people!” Just because he’s grumpier now doesn’t mean he’s not still essentially the Doctor. And I predict that as the episodes continue, he’ll become less outwardly nasty toward his companions and settle into more of a Third Doctor vibe. He won’t be their “buddy,” and it’ll be clear that he’s the superior intellect in the room, but he’ll still take joy in seeing the world through their eyes. See if I’m not right. I just hope Capaldi sticks around long enough to make it happen. I heard he’s back for Series 9–I hope this isn’t just a rumor.
The Something Awful TV IV subforum is pretty good. It’s fairly strictly moderated, although not to TWOP levels.
I think the callback to “Runaway Bride” was definitely intentional, fitting with the theme of mirroring past adventures in a somewhat twisted way; also, note that both episodes have spider-monsters.
This thread may be of interest to some. Someone who thinks he hates Who is challenged to watch all the episodes of the reboot. His perspective is pretty interesting, and watching his feelings about the show change as it goes on has been fun. He’s just up to the first episode of Donna’s return.