Doctor Who S08E07: You Have To Crack A Few Moons To Make A Space Dragon

This week’s episode of Doctor Who was a classic Very Tense Space Conundrum in the vein of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, 42 and The Waters of Mars crossed with a bit of the “left to their own devices, humans are xenophobic garbage” stuff seen in Midnight and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. Plus there were space spiders!

But before we get to all of that, there’s a little bit of squabbling over the fact that the student the Doctor took on a little trip at the end of the last episode, Courtney, is acting out a bit because the Doctor told her she wasn’t special enough to travel with him. She’s also routinely sneaking into the TARDIS, which for some reason the Doctor seems to have permanently parked in the caretaker’s shed at Clara’s school. Clara wants the Doctor to feed Courtney an “everybody’s special” line and the Doctor is like

This way Courtney can be the first lady to walk on the moon, and if that doesn’t make her feel special then she needs therapy TBH. So they’re all a bit surprised when they leave the TARDIS and find themselves on another spaceship, which is about to crash land on the moon. The Doctor is like “Close enough” and then we get the classic moment of the crew of the spaceship showing up and being like “Who the fuck are you and how the fuck did you get onto my spaceship.” Luckily for them, the lady astronaut who is the spaceship’s captain is just like “Whatevs, do you want to help us save the Earth?”

Apparently there’s something wrong with the moon which is causing it to be heavier and fucking up gravity, which the Doctor demonstrates by playing with a yo-yo. This is making tides and shit not work right back on Earth and this spaceship, which is packed with nuclear bombs, is the last chance and blah blah blah, typical space quest stuff.

They all go out to investigate and find an abandoned Mexican spaceship that was mining for minerals but is now covered in cobwebs and full of dead astronauts. We don’t have to wait very long to figure out what happened to them!

The spider eats one of the expendable crew members (the other one already got eaten while out exploring) and then everybody manages to escape except for Courtney who gets trapped in the room with it by herself. Luckily she has the presence of mind to use a classic bug-killing technique: spraying it with corrosive household cleaning chemicals!

The Doctor examines the spider corpse and looks at some space maps and somehow determines that the moon is falling apart and will completely collapse within an hour and a half. Courtney is like “Hey Clara I’m kind of over it, can I go home now?” so they take her back to the TARDIS so she can wait while they finish their adventure. Clara is like “Do we really have to stay though? We all know that the moon didn’t break in 2049 so I doubt we’re needed.”

The Doctor gives a convoluted explanation about how there are points in time that he can’t see where big decisions are made and that for all they know the moon gets replaced by a hologram in 2049 but the moral of the story is that it’s up to them to handle the moon situation.

They go exploring some more and the Doctor dips his yo-yo into a crevasse and it comes out wet, so he jumps into a hole to investigate.

Clara and the astronaut lady are like “Ok?” and start heading back to the spaceship. Courtney calls Clara from the TARDIS and is like “I’m bored and posting moon pics on Tumblr” and astronaut lady is like “LOL my grandma used to post things on Tumblr” and we all chortle until the moon starts to fall apart and the spaceship falls into a giant moon canyon right before their eyes! Clara is like “If Courtney dies on the moon I am so getting fired.”

The Doctor pops back up, covered in goop, and they go into the Mexican space station to regroup. He uses Clara’s phone to skype with Courtney while he fills everybody in on the fact that he just discovered that the moon is actually a giant egg that’s about to hatch. The creature inside is huge and the only one of its kind and the Doctor thinks it’s beautiful but of course the astronaut lady is like “Yeah yeah but obviously we have to kill it.”

Clara and Courtney are not on board but she goes on to say that probably if this giant thing hatches it will kill the earth or something and that ostensibly Clara’s future children are on earth in 2049 and does she really want them to die??? Clara is like “UGH I DUNNO what do you think we should do, Doc?” The Doctor is like “You ladies figure it out” and helps Courtney get the TARDIS to where they are and then gets in it himself and leaves them to argue.

So basically there’s a bunch of back and forth about the ethics of killing baby space monsters and then they get interrupted by a transmission from Earth.

He tells them that shit is getting even more fucked on Earth and Clara is like “Ok that’s nice, can you immediately broadcast our conversation to the entire planet? It’s important.” He’s like “No prob” and she gives a speech to Earth about how they all have to decide whether to murder a space baby or let it live and possibly destroy the planet. She says that if they want to kill it they should turn their lights out, and if they want to leave it alone they should turn their lights on.

All three ladies agree that this is a good idea because it means that they don’t have to actually make the hard decision, so they run to a space window to see what Earth has to say.

Meanwhile the other half of the planet may all have their lights on and boy won’t they be mad that their votes weren’t counted! But anyway, the astronaut lady starts to get the bomb ready. They don’t know if the Doctor is coming back to get them or they’re about to blow up, so nobody’s in a very good mood.

Just as the countdown to explosion time is about to end Clara is like “Actually, fuck this!” and hits the cancel button, right as the TARDIS reappears. The Doctor is like “Let’s GTFO before this thing hatches” and they head back to Earth for a front row seat to the hatching.

The Doctor lectures them all about how this is the day that humans got interested in space travel again because of how beautiful the space dragon was and that from that point on humans would explore every corner of space until the end of time and all because of them. The astronaut lady thanks Clara for stopping her from killing a baby, and then while nobody is paying attention the space dragon lays a new moon egg and everything is great again.

The Doctor takes Clara and Courtney back to the school and Courtney heads off to class. You think it’s going to be a happily ever after ending but then Clara is SO PISSED and chews out the Doctor for abandoning her. He says that he was showing her that he respected her and trusted her to make the right choice and she is like “FUCK THAT I H8 U AND I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN PLEASE GO AWAY!” He is like “Frowny face” and she storms out to rant to Danny about it like she promised she would if the Doctor was ever too much of an asshole.

He’s like “That’s nice Clara but the mere fact that you’re still so mad means you’re not done with the Doctor. Call me when you’ve calmed down enough to break up with him rationally” and then they hug.