uristmcdorf
I feel so bad for Capaldi. He’s wanted this for so long, and he finally gets his dream, and Moffat has to go and give him stories like this.
This could have been a deep and interesting story. The moral quandary of whether it’s better to kill the moon/egg or doom all of humanity could have made for some meaty debate and storytelling. I mean, whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life, a situation like this one has got to be one where people on both sides of the fence would find themselves unsure which choice would be the right one.
We could have had scenes of the people of Earth wrestling morally over the decision. We could have had Lundvik and Clara each making an empassioned speech or debate over the feed to Earth, and seen the lights switching on and off again as they each made very valid and very real arguments on both sides of the decision.
We could have had the choice made by Earth - whatever choice it was, and I feel like they could have played it either way - have ACTUAL FUCKING CONSEQUENCES.
Kill the egg. Have the infant inside it let out some sort of, I dunno, psychic cry of pain and fear that everyone on Earth felt in that instant. Have them wrestle with the choice the made, and let the desire to put it right spur humanity into a new generation of s,pace travel, eager to find another egg and nurture it instead.
Let the egg live. Have the infant inside be beautiful and intelligent, but have the egg actually shatter, sending thick slabs of itself to Earth to wreak havoc. Let that choice be an actually difficult one with consequences, where the planet survives but millions die, seas shift and cities are ruined. But people survive, and rebuild, and are so driven by both fascination and terror of what they saw that they start examining the stars once again.
Or have them let the creature live, only for it to turn out to be just as bad as Lundvik said it would be - a parasitic creature hatched in orbit around a host planet that was chosen specifically because it was rich in life. Specifically because it would make the perfect feeding ground for a newborn creature. Let them face down the challenge of having to kill the thing they just voted to let live.
Don’t make an over-simplified, pat little story where there are literally no serious consequences for the choice that was made. Sigh.
And it really is a shame, because Capaldi himself is fantastic in this role. He might be a really overly mean Doctor, but he plays his character flawlessly and I rather like that we’re moving away from the Happy Child-Friendly Fairy Tale BFF Doctor of Matt Smith into something a little darker, a little less trustworthy, a little more alien.
But a character like that does. Not. Work. When you throw them into stories where it’s clear the writer had an agenda regarding what the “right” choice would be.
After all, isn’t this exactly the fantasy that pro-life people sell to women struggling with the choice of whether or not to keep the baby? Everything will be fine! It’ll all turn out okay in the end! Consequences aren’t real! The dozen things you are terrified of that are causing you to feel conflicted are meaningless in the face of a beautiful child space dragon baby that would possibly cure cancer inspire a new space race!
oodlyenough
Yeah, I think this is another important reason the moral dilemma didn’t work for me (and presumably for many other people). Like you said, this was another instance where the stakes were meant to be very high and then wound up being very low. Everything turned out better than expected, literally; the moonegg even SOMEHOW replaced itself with a moon that presumably will be the right size for the right tides and everything.
Any of the scenarios you describe here would have made the episode more powerful for me as it would have demonstrated actual ramifications from the choice they made and it would have lessened the incredibly heavy-handed suggestion that anyone who hadn’t been willing to risk humanity for the sake of one egg (which in practice was everyone on the planet other than Clara and Courtney) was wrong.
I can see the counterargument that these alternatives might be too dark for a family show like Doctor Who, and that maybe the case. But if you aren’t going to explore the ramifications of something because those ramifications are too dark for a family show, don’t write the plotline into the family show in the first place. Presenting me with a seemingly-terrible moral dilemma but giving me the subtext that there is one clear right choice and one clear wrong choice and that choosing the right choice means absolutely nothing bad will happen to anyone at all feels cheap. And, like you said, given that the actual mechanics of the episode call to mind abortion, this kind of ending is even more grating.
occupy-gallifrey
