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Peter Harness wrote:Fen'Harel'sTARDIS wrote:I thoroughly enjoyed the wondrous, whimsical and fantastical element of the dragon egg being the moon in the episode, but wondered at the Doctor's choice to do the 'adult' thing and play Solomon by 'letting them make the decision' being looked down on by the other characters, when that is the very thing they've been whining and clamoring for.
I have noticed this happening frequently in the series as of late, where the Doctor does something heroic and everyone reprimands him, or derides him for daring to be traumatized while they could easily save themselves by doing what he (and now she, it, etc., which is perfectly fine) says in certain instances. In real life, the Doctor would be a traumatized war veteran with PTSD who needed care, yet all I see in the show is that he is a selfish old man, how DARE he be a heroic figure? So much of current media/entertainment seems afflicted by this collective oblivion with regards to the emotional needs of our heroic figures... it seems strange, cruel, harsh and somewhat narcissistic to me. Do you have any thought as to why this treatment of our heroes seems to be a trend?
Well, that's a big question... And I think it's a difficulty with Kill the Moon.
My thoughts on this are going to be a bit rambling and unfocused, so please forgive that.
I think the fact that the Doctor absents himself from the process and leaves Clara, Courtney and Lundvik - the humans, the representatives of planet Earth - to make the decision for themselves - is uncomfortable and hard to work out for a lot of people who watched it. I guess that's one of the (many) problems that people have with the episode. And, to be honest, I find it tricky myself - as I believe I should do.
Because I don't believe that it's the purpose of a writer or a storyteller to instruct the audience what to think. I think it's the purpose of a writer to entertain, to provoke emotion, to provoke debate, and ultimately, not to come down on either side. To show a whole bunch of characters who are doing what they happen to think is right, and to allow the audience to engage with that, to have an intellectual as well as emotional response to the story. I don't want to package the moral of the story up in a neat little parcel and tie it with a bow.
As a writer, I don't necessarily know all the answers. And I don't believe that I should. I think that drama is a two-way process. The writer and the actors present something for the audience to take away and think about.
I think that the Doctor talks about grey areas at some point in the script. And I guess, looking back on it, that this is what I subconsciously or otherwise wanted to explore. The whole moral decision, the actions of the Doctor, and Clara's response to it - I think they're all grey areas. Areas in which nobody is totally right or totally wrong. And even though I wasn't specifically trying to write an allegory about abortion or the right to choose, I think the fact that a lot of people read it as such an allegory is interesting. Because basically, the whole right-to-life versus right-to-choose debate is a complex moral debate, with plenty of grey areas; one which deserves serious thought and understanding from both sides, but which instead is more often than not polarised into one side being right and the other being wrong.
We live in very binary times. In which it seems that one has to subscribe to one polar-opposite view or another. Whereas, in fact, I believe that the majority of human experience takes place in the grey areas in between.
I think that Kill the Moon is about how difficult it is to make decisions, how there are so many shades of grey within people's characters. And what you're talking about in terms of how people treat their heroes is perhaps a part of this.
Basically, for me, every character in that story has their flaws, and their good points, and deserves to be understood. Nobody comes out of it 100% blameless or 100% guilty. And I think that's probably the way it should be. I'd never make a moral judgement on any of my characters. Nobody's perfect. And to understand all about any one person is to forgive all.
I still like Kill the Moon very much. In fact, I think it's probably my favourite of all my Doctor Who stories, because I think it's the trickiest, and because it divides people so much.
I understand that people think the science is crazy and unscientific, but all the science in Doctor Who is crazy and unscientific. I could have chosen to plaster it over with technobabble, but I didn't, because I thought that anyone who had a problem with the silliness of the science could just make up their own technobabble. I understand that people think the fact that the Moon is an egg is a silly idea, but all the ideas in Doctor Who are silly, they just don't happen to effect something that you can see in the sky every night. And the kids that I know who watched it think that the fact that the Moon is an egg is a very magical thing. I know that many people were enjoying the episode up until that point where the Doctor says, "the Moon's an egg", and afterwards, they thought it was the worst thing they'd ever seen since Time and the Rani, but so be it. I want to take such risks, and I want to surprise people and I suppose, a natural consequence of that is that sometimes people will think it's too much or too silly. But I think in Doctor Who, more than any other show, you need to keep on pushing at the boundaries.
And I love the fact that people argue about Kill the Moon, that it provokes so much debate. Because that's what I think drama should do. If you please everyone then probably you're doing something wrong.
http://forums.drwho-online.co.uk/threads/question-what-was-the-motivation-behind-kill-the-moon.833658/
