YMMV / Doctor Who S34 E7 "Kill the Moon"

• Accidental Aesop: Is the message pro-life or pro-choice?
  • Some viewers reacted angrily to what they saw as an anti-abortion message in the episode. There's a question of preventing a birth and the Doctor says "it's not my moon" and skives off, leaving the women to make the "choice" of terminating it. Then, in a democratic method, the whole world together decides to prevent the birth. But finally, Clara just can't bear to "kill the baby", and her decision to save it is proven to be the right one in the end.
  • The message could be seen as it is the woman's choice alone whether to terminate the pregnancy, regardless of what others tell her she should do or the outcome, making it a pro-choice message.
  • The main difference is who you interpret as representing the mother: the people who will be directly affected or the woman with her name in the opening credits who hadn't heard of the issue an hour ago.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Was the Doctor as ignorant of the outcome as he says, or did he know what would happen all along and pretended he didn't to pose a Secret Test of Character? In the dialogue where he expresses his inability to see what will happen, he happens to namedrop the exact outcome (the Moon in the future being a different one), is this coincidence or a sign that he knows more than he says?
  • Clara is upset that the Doctor lumped her "in with the rest of all the little humans that you think are so tiny and silly and predictable!" But those who saw "Deep Breath" know that the Doctor doesn't think humans are small to him, though Clara did not hear him say this to the Half-Face Man. In any case, is she actually projecting what she thinks of the rest of humanity onto him, given how far she's come since she was just a nanny?
  • Some reviews accuse Clara of having already made up her mind to spare the creature, and only holding the vote because she's a coward and was hoping it would let her pass the buck over responsibility for it.
• Anvilicious:
  • Humanity gave up on space exploration, and then found they were in desperate need of it. At that point they had only third string astronauts and shuttle so old it was a museum piece. At the end of the episode, the Doctor speaks of the glorious future awaiting humanity now that it will restart the space program. It would be hard to be less subtle than that.
  • Part of the reason for the angry reaction to the pro-life aesop is that the episode is blatant when it continually refers to the creature as a baby rather than a larva or a grub.
    • And even if the pro-life metaphor is unintentional, the "killing is bad" message is still VERY heavy handed
  • Danny advising Clara not to make a big decision over a "bad day."
• Ass Pull: The moon creature lays a second egg right after it's born, without any sign given before that it could, neatly sidestepping any problems destroying the moon would cause and proving Clara was right. That sort of information would have been helpful beforehand. As a bonus, the shell even disintegrates harmlessly.
• Broken Base:
  • The fandom is on the fence about whether Clara's What the Hell, Hero? speech to the Doctor was deserved or whether the Doctor was respecting humanity by taking a step back and letting them make their own decisions and she is simply overreacting. (In any event, the latter is what the author was aiming at.)
  • Were the Doctor's intentions selfish or noble and just his execution that botched it all up?
• Critical Dissonance: While this episode seems to be a Broken Base for fans, critics for the most part loved it.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Clara mentions that she wants to have children. Those who have seen "Face the Raven" will know that won't come to pass.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Turns out declaring war on the moon because of its tactical advantage may not have been as silly as it seemed. Strax was right this whole time!
• Inferred Holocaust: Mention is made of horrendous destructive tides, but no specifics are given; the only report from Earth is that things are going "badly", but apparently the developed world still has electricity, even the parts along coastlines.
• Memetic Mutation: The fact that the Moon is a giant egg.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: In the United States at least, this episode is known more for being the subject of intense debate over whether it's an anti-abortion allegory, whether it's pro-life or pro-choice, and how well it handled its message, than for its story. The writers claim they did not intend the episode to be such an allegory, and European viewers generally focused more on its story than its (un)intentional message, but in the United States, the controversy is integral to its perception.
• Questionable Casting: Lundvig was presumably meant as a young character, given that she alludes to her grandmother having used Tumblr like it's some relic of the past. Problem is, the actress they went with is middle-aged and clearly looks like she would've been using Tumblr as a teenager.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The central dilemma was accused of being "an allegory for the abortion debate" by some North American viewers. Notably, viewers in Europe didn't notice such an angle to the problem and were baffled by the fixation of a part of the American viewership on this accusation. While debates about the morality of abortion occur on both sides of the Atlantic, the American ones generally tend to be more heated and divided, which might have contributed to such a reading of a narrative element in the episode.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The Doctor's polka dot shirt. Thankfully, he's in the Sanctuary base 6 suit for most of the episode.

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